Going into the midterms, the bipartisan backlash against AI gives Democrats a number of politically attractive options. They can try to tap into the growing opposition to data centers, particularly in states where the issue has become suddenly and massively divisive. They can talk about AI as a labor issue, reestablishing a common cause with unions and newer members of the white-collar precariat. Big-tech leaders, having shed much of their opportunistic Obama-era liberalism and put on MAGA hats instead, have offered themselves up as villains: impossibly wealthy, individually either aloof or openly menacing, and obsessed and/or amused by a technology they frequently suggest could blow apart society if it doesn’t do something worse. They lined up to flatter an unpopular president at the peak of his brief second-term popularity and have benefited from his administration’s anti-regulatory approach.

It would be an overstatement to say Democratic politicians have developed a thorough or coherent approach to the many policy questions surrounding AI, and their affirmative visions are pretty vague. There’s plenty of room and precedent for the Democratic Caucus to fuck up here in both material and political ways. For now, though, as an out-of-power party in need of a message, holding up a jar of brown water collected from a tap polluted by Meta data-center construction in Georgia, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently did, will go a long way. More reluctant politicians can get away with saying, “Yeah, we’re worried about AI too, we are going to do something about it, and all that bad stuff you’ve been hearing about jobs and electricity prices, well, the Republicans helped make that happen, and we’ll do something different.” 

Republicans are in a tougher position, which is why a bunch of emerging conservative factions is gearing up for a fight. As national incumbents, Republicans substantially own the AI backlash, alongside inflation, a general anxiety about the economy, and the growing perception that the federal government is engaged in open corruption with American industry, including some of its newest amoral innovators. Trump’s approval rating is low and falling, but the AI industry somehow polls worse and across party lines.

Despite last year’s executive order about “woke AI” and the Trump administration’s attempts to strong-arm Anthropic through the Department of Defense, the basic shape of its AI policy, led until recently by PayPal mafia member and venture capitalist David Sacks, has been to clear the path and let things rip. A recent “comprehensive national........

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