The Democratic Party’s New Villain

A new boogeyman arrived in Democratic campaign ads this year with such force that it was possible to forget it had ever been absent.

Slotted between clichés about “rising costs,” the “rigged economy,” and the elusive “fair shot” for the middle class, the familiar villains of billionaires, insurance companies, and “MAGA extremists” were joined by a friend turned foe.

“Big Tech’s invading Ohio, driving up our electric rates, damaging our environment, destroying our farmland,” Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio warned in one ad.

Roy Cooper, who is running in North Carolina for Senate, said in another: “My plan stops grocery stores from using AI to overcharge you.” A 30-second spot in Wisconsin features Rebecca Cooke, a congressional candidate, promising voters seated around a kitchen table: “I don’t want to be beholden to any of these Big Tech companies.” And the House Majority PAC, a group closely aligned with Democratic leaders that has been attacking Republicans for their proximity to the new baddie on the block, released an ad labeling the incumbent Republican in Wisconsin’s Third District “Data Center Derrick Van Orden”—and suggesting that he was designed by artificial intelligence to serve its interests.

The sudden Democratic revulsion toward Big Tech and all its offspring—data centers, artificial intelligence, tech oligarchs—has defined this midterm election and will likely continue through the early innings of the 2028 presidential campaign.

For most of the past few decades, Democrats cast themselves as a futurist party heralding a digital utopia, a posture founded by Al Gore and solidified when Barack Obama traveled to Google’s headquarters in 2007 to announce his presidential campaign’s commitment to “use technology to reach ever-expanding horizons.” Republicans were the ones warning about censorship and centralized power, as corporate executives clumsily adjusted the levers of permissible speech on social media.

But partisan passions on tech have been realigning from the moment President Trump delivered his second inaugural address in 2025, with Silicon Valley’s centibillionaires as background props .

The president’s hostility toward attempts to rein in AI has solidified the shift.

Democratic politicians and strategists now enter the final weeks of a midterm season convinced that they have uncovered a way to persuade Trump’s voters to at least hesitate before voting for Republicans.

“Trump and his anti-AI-regulation posture is dragging the party to a politically suicidal place,” Rob Flaherty, one of Joe Biden’s top digital strategists, told me.