R Po sent this piece from Liberal Currents - it’s a first-person account of attending a Democratic convention in Georgia:
From the way people speak about it online, you could be forgiven for imagining that Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton have a brunch fortress somewhere from which they order drone strikes on anyone with a plan to win an election. Members of Congress and New York Times columnists can regularly be heard demanding Democrats “do” something about their base, that they “run” one kind of candidate or another, or tie themselves to the whipping post and endure the arrows from some fresh conservative freakout. But from the perspective of someone who knows—has learned—how the party works, they’re talking to shadows on the wall. All they have is a sock puppet named "The Democrats" which, they are constantly lamenting, doesn’t listen.
That’s because the party is in Savannah. The sock is just a sock.
“Convention” is a great term for this sort of thing. There’s a real air of fandom. A lot of hugging, hurried whispers to the side, and bleary-eyed hangovers from reunions the night before. Genuinely, a lot of blue. Almost everyone who works for the party is a volunteer, something I've been doing at the county level for a little over a year. I’m only here because my county committee elected me as a delegate and it’s no small thing to be trusted by such people—by those willing to lay out their nights and weekends for years in the hope of making things a little bit better. People who know joy is a thing to be taken rather than merely longed for, and for whom hope remains an active verb. I’m greeted by a lazy sunrise in Georgia’s garden of good and evil and Savannah is running over with a zealous joy, focused and hopeful.
I think the whole thing is worth a read because, Briley’s right, the rank and file at a convention are the people who love the party. They have may have slightly differing views, but in general they want Democrats to win. It’s a nice reality check.
Scott sent this a few days ago but I think Labor Day got in the way of me using it, but it’s a good piece on data centers:
One of the many blinking red lights for the AI industry came in the form of a Gallup survey in May. It found that a whopping 71 percent of Americans oppose the construction of new data centers in their communities to support the AI industry, with 48 percent of those polled saying they were strongly opposed. For comparison, Gallup noted that the peak opposition to nuclear power plants in one of its long-running surveys was only 63 percent.
Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer reported earlier this month that his own outlet’s survey found an extraordinary depth and breadth to public opposition to AI data centers. “Data centers are 43 points underwater with Republicans, 65 points underwater with independents, and 75 points underwater with Democrats,” he wrote. “Notably, local data centers are 63 points underwater with rural voters, a group that has skewed more Republican over the past decade.” In an age of hyperpartisanship, there’s something almost comforting about how many people, from all walks of life, hate AI.
This opposition has translated into electoral blowback for AI companies and data center proponents. In Utah, longtime state Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost his seat in a Republican primary in June over local opposition to a planned sprawling complex that would’ve transformed 40,000 acres in a rural county into the nation’s largest data center. Residents in Virginia, the world’s largest hub of data center infrastructure, and nearby Maryland have also ousted local officials over their support for the proposals.
Data centers are the no-brainer of this election, and the fact that Democrats aren’t going all-in on opposing them is simple political malpractice.
Finally, this is a piece from the Journal of Lost Time, which is an online magazine focusing on travel and outdoors, usually. In this case, they’ve reprinted the first chapter from a book about Texas border towns. Here’s the political part, but the rest of it is really good exposition and photography about the border, which is very different from other communities:
The night after Donald Trump's election, Alfonso Nevárez sat down with his friends, family, and a bottle of whiskey. He's known affectionately as "Poncho." "We finished that bottle," he said, laughing solemnly. As the Democratic state representative of District 74—the largest in Texas—he said that he serves a constituency that spans 12 counties and two time zones. His criticism of the people he serves is tempered but vigorous. "The apathy is just awesome. Our political system works, but there's so much passivity. Now you have people out marching, but they didn't vote. Lack of participation gave us Trump."
Palpably exasperated, Poncho went on, "There's a lull settling in, and it's not good. How many times can you muster righteous indignation?" He's part of a generation of Hispanics who have become leaders and professionals, but who grew up at a time in Texas when white men and women held most of the positions of authority and influence. Now, he sees the 40 years of progress that's been made slipping away. Trump's rhetoric, he recognizes, has tapped into the past, targeting the white, rural conservatives nostalgic for their former power. "I can't remember when there was more tension."
With this, Poncho doesn't just mean the tension between minority and white America, Republicans and Democrats. He also worries about an intensified strain of anti-immigrant sentiment between first- and second-generation Mexican Americans. He alluded to the characterization of immigrant groups in this country "pulling up the ladder behind them," explaining that the real issue for them was finding a sense of belonging.
