AI Is About to Blow Up American Politics
When James Carville and Matt Walsh are sounding the same alarm, something big is shifting.
Something in American politics feels off.
The signs are everywhere: Trump and Mamdani’s more than cordial meeting, Marjorie Taylor Greene defecting and Trump casually pitching an Obamacare extension.
This is a symptom of a political map and world that’s starting to warp.
People feel squeezed, restless and confused. The future has arrived faster than society can process it.
The system is stuck in yesterday. The country feels like it’s bracing for something that it can’t quite see yet.
When I was getting into politics as a kid, I worshiped the campaign documentary the War Room. I became the biggest James Carville fan in my age bracket. I listen to his podcast with Al Hunt weekly and read his op-eds.
His most recent op-ed stood out to me. He was hitting a lot of the notes I hit on this Substack.
He writes that “it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”
Carville is not a progressive. He’s fought with the Squad for years. He’s an establishment, centrist operator. But when he starts talking like this, you know something is shifting.
I sent the piece to a Democratic operative friend and he texted back: “Dude I’ve been freaking out about that all day. Feels like a phase shift.”
But this is just the beginning. The real shift hasn’t happened yet.
Carville is talking about the same thing that’s going to force AI into the middle of our politics: bottom vs. top economics.
AI isn’t just going to reshape our economy. It’s going to crack open the political map.
It’s currently being built around capital and not for the public good. From safety to data centers to the building of monopolies, we haven’t had a real talk about the right approach.
The Silicon Valley contingent at the inauguration wasn’t symbolic. All of this is happening out in the open.
It was a preview of the next 30 years of wealth distribution. A handful of corporations are wiring the next economy and rigging it for themselves.
I’m pro-tech and innovation. But this is all about who gets to own the future.
People everywhere are picking up on this dynamic. That’s why the mood is increasingly unstable. People are pissed.
Interestingly, the anger is converging in an unexpected place.
What we’re watching now is the beginning of political fractures that neither party sees coming. The MAGA base has always been suspicious of Big Tech and they’re starting to notice.
You can feel the tension with how GOP governors are already breaking with Trump on AI, warning about job losses, utility costs, youth safety and the massive scale and influence these companies are building.
Democrats have been talking about inequality for years but have no message for what AI means for real people. You see nibbling on the edges: Kamala Harris urges AI companies to consider trust and empathy... Richard Blumenthal warns about AI in toys for Christmas.
But few leaders are taking on the core question: what happens when an entire economic system is being rebuilt without the public in mind?
Then there are moments when the most unlikely people say something that hits the bullseye.
Matt Walsh, someone I disagree with on basically everything (especially this), posted about how AI will erase millions of jobs, how nobody is looking out for regular people and the country isn’t ready for the shockwaves that are coming.
What makes this moment so wild is that Walsh is describing the same pressure Carville flagged: an economic system being built without normal people in mind.
When someone on the uber far right and someone like James Carville are hitting the same exact notes, something big is developing underneath the typical partisan noise.
It’s not about left-versus-right anymore. The culture war politics that have dominated our politics won’t be capable of competing with a future where huge chunks of the workforce are reshaped or eliminated.
Trump is the glue holding the Republican coalition together. Once he’s gone, the coalition’s contradictions will explode. Democrats will feel the pressure too and will have an economic populist agenda in some form.
AI is accelerating every tension in our society: inequality, affordability, who rises, who falls. The companies building it out hold more power than most governments on the planet.
The gap between winners and losers is about to widen in ways we haven’t seen. We will see billion dollar companies with one employee — the founder.
People are starting to feel this on a gut level. The anger is starting to spread across groups that would otherwise despise each other.
Anti-monopoly progressives. MAGA populists. Parents freaked out about AI and kids. Workers worried about their job security. Local small businesses watching Amazon and other tech giants swallow everything.
Nothing connects them politically, but they all realize the system is being rigged against them.
The future of politics won’t be left vs. right. It’ll be concentrated power vs. everyone else, like we saw in the FDR era.
AI is speeding this up. The coalitions that will form will be weird, brittle and unpredictable.
People should be concerned.. I am concerned.
Great insight Kevin. The greed is palpable. And the rage is beginning to bubble up.