The tech bros were democrats, what happened?
Beyond the obvious, let’s unpack it
Silicon Valley has always been strongly Democrat-leaning. From the CEOs to the VCs to the engineers to all the salespeople, HR, finance, marketing, even back in the 90’s when we still manufactured things, the guys loading trucks may have been line dancing cowboys from Sunnyvale but the overwhelming majority of people were true blue democrats.
For me and for many of the immigrant class arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area to start a new life, it was a mistake to assume all of America was like this place. It took a trip to Bakersfield and another few wanderings of the reservation to realize there’s a another America outside our bubble. I didn’t like all of it, but I did enjoy the crudeness, the lack of PC and the humor. Not enough to want to move into it.
Fast forward to 2024 and the shock horror discovery by the D-party that many groups of assumed loyal voters had jumped ship. We’ll leave it for others to talk about Latino exodus, union worker exodus, young people exodus, small business owner exodus, black vote exodus, and um, I think there are more exoduses to talk about.
Let’s focus on tech bro exodus. For today’s purposes the term tech bro shall include tech-chick, tech marketing person, tech sales rep, tech HR girl, yeah everyone who works in tech. What the fuck happened?
First, the billionaires. They began feeling the anti-billionaire vibe a long time ago. Larry Ellison got no love from his local brethren even in the 90’s while fighting the evil Micro$oft empire. He got unedited hate press from the SJ Mercury, SF Chronicle and the piss poor tech media that preceded TechCrunch. He ignored it and donated more to blue candidates than red. The social media billionaires were all deep blue and took time off work to attend woke marches, #BlackLivesMatter, #meToo etc. Nobody got any love from the progressives. We hate the rich, they said. We especially hate young punk billionaires who got rich quick and think they’re hot shit, they said.
Then, the engineers. Easily offended people took to social media when it was still cool (2011) and demonized hapless incel males for making lewd comments and making sexual innuendos as they peered over their blackscreen MacBooks to try to lighten the mood. Nobody forgave them for being on the spectrum and socially awkward since age 6. We hate tech bros, said the holy people in the blue tent.
By 2020, and despite the Biden win, the tech community was feeling alienated. New York hated tech since around 2015 when it realized tech was eating most of NYC’s owned-and-controlled industries. Tech media and digital advertising and social media began making more money than all of Madison Avenue’s TV networks and ad agencies combined. VCs controlled the New York money pumped in by LPs and routinely returned higher multiples than any NYC hedge fund, even with the fails that were paid for by the home runs. Fox News and other sources began attacking tech founders, calling them communists and apologists for horrible groups and causes. Mostly NYC hated tech out of envy. Democrats hated tech out of envy. The red-leaning blue collar Americans hated tech because they feared what they didn’t understand. Tech was now an island, with few friends in either the red or blue tents, yet its expansion continued and son it owned the world.
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison were the early outliers, publicly expressing more support for the red pill, while maintaining a semblance of respect and recognition for the blue people as they steered away. Elon Musk voted Obama, Hillary, Biden, before waking up one day and violently swinging away from blue, vowing to destroy everything woke and everything progressive in his tsunami revenge campaign. He’s a genius, narcissist, egomaniac and power hungry. That’s not wrong, when you’re that level of genius, it’s expected. He did not enjoy the barrage of criticism for his efforts to save humanity and make a trillion dollars in the process. He was going to get his pound of flesh for the multiple sabotage campaigns against Tesla in Fremont, governor Newsom’s relentless sabotage of all things SpaceX and Tesla and taxes and labor relations, and he promised to punish Biden for coercing Delaware judge Kathleen McCormick into striking down his lucrative stock compensation package approved by the SEC and stockholders in 2016–17.
Millions of people who were invested or career-committed to technology have now decided the Democrat agenda is not their friend. They’ve moved away, and most have not moved all the way across to becoming MAGA supporters. We are, however, ex-democrats. We no longer tune in to the chorus preaching social justice, wokeism, the endless narrative about the oppressor and the oppressed. We had to vacate because the agenda offered us nothing in exchange for our support. It ignored middle class families, people wishing for safe streets and decent schools, small business owners and white collar professionals. Most of us who work in tech share a deep admiration for visionaries and iconoclasts, the crazy ones, those who thought they could change the world — and did. We hope/wish to be one of the crazy ones. We do not aspire to be ordinary. When surrounded by a hate-the-rich cohort that whines about billionaires, we can’t join in and nod approvingly as they berate geniuses and suggest the wealthiest people should be separated from their wealth as punishment for their greed.
It feels good to be an ex-democrat. I put down the rock and my pack is lighter. I read and listen to both sides. It does not feel good to listen to the more extreme end of MAGA’s agenda. It’s fascinating to observe the struggles within Trump’s camp as he adjusts to embrace his new tech bro supporters while trying to figure out how not to abandon his planet of the apes family from MAGA 1.0 and January 6th. Pardoning the insurrectionists was a powerful move to retain their support, but one would expect that over the coming 4 years his agenda will be the advancement of tech, not the nurturing of the uneducated, whose future is not good, whichever way you look at it. Perhaps JD Vance can offer a bright path for the abandoned Americans — the Appalachians and the coal miner counties — where new datacenters and factories may spring up and offer employment in desolate areas.
It feels strange to observe antagonist reactions by MAGA pundits against tech bros who used to be democrats and who now embrace the Trump agenda (Zuck, Bezos, etc). It seems they’re allergic to democrats changing sides, when one might have thought they’d be delighted to welcome defectors wading across the alligator moat.
Personally, I’m very happy about the D-party getting a huge slap in the face in the 2024 elections. Blue cities washed out woke mayors, too-soft house representatives were also voted out, and Kamala’s agenda was too close to Biden’s, so the country said no. The sanctimonious, preachy, petty and vindictive mentality that took over the party was insufferable. It’s hatred of tech was the kicker for me. If America self-sabotages by crippling tech companies it will become a second tier country and all our next gen tech will come from China. Unacceptable.
I plan to camp out in the space between, with no allegiance to either party, and an appreciation of what’s good in Trump’s agenda, some anxiety about what isn’t good, and a plan to stay curious, hands-off and observe as the democrats try to regroup and rethink. We know for certain that if the woke agenda doesn’t get dumped, the blue party has no chance in 2028.
