AI
The hottest new bipartisan issue
Americans are united in their opposition or skepticism of AI data centers
To those who say unifying the country is impossible, take note. Opposition to AI data centers is the "most bipartisan issue since beer."
Anger around data centers planned for dozens of cities and towns is palpable on both sides of the aisle. Polls shows 70+ of Americans oppose the massive energy centers the size of 32 football fields.
AI data centers are expected to raise electricity and water costs for the residents of the town or city. Homeowners near the sites are also, understandably, worried their property values will go down.
The out-of-state companies involved are being secretive in some cases—not alerting residents of their plans to enter their backyards. Such hubris, along with the price tag and environmental impacts, are getting all sorts of folks riled up.
The AI industry and others, including unions, claim jobs will be created with the construction and use of these massive facilities. It’s too early to know if that’s the case.
Many aren’t wanting to ban outright the data centers. They are instead pushing for guardrails and common sense regulations to make the centers better economic stewards, if not neighbors.
Read more: NYT, PBS Newshour
Democrats’ opportunity with AI
Dismissing AI as a media tool is like rejecting the use of radio for electioneering in the 1930s and 40s.
Companies heavily invested in the growth of artificial intelligence need more compute power. They are going to look for it in small towns and major cities across the country. Hundreds of projects are in the works to build data centers to provide amounts of power that are hard to imagine.
Citizens aren't loving these companies coming into their backyards. Why? The worry their utility bills, from electricity to water, will increase somewhat substantially.
It should go without saying: The AI industry should be paying for its own increased energy use--not the residents of a city. AI platforms are siphoning off significant amount of public resources--like from an electric grid and water supplies. That makes it a public policy and political issue.
A Pew poll published in March showed people in both parties--though Democrats more so--are concerned about rising costs, the environment, and quality of life when it comes to data centers.
Maine passed a temporary ban on large data centers this year. A majority in Wisconsin think the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits.
Needless to say, the AI titans are facing a messaging challenge with data centers. That's why Meta launched an ad campaign earlier this year. The core message was jobs—a tough sell. Overlaying AI's cost on top of the already poor economy isn't playing well. (See Blue Rose Research)
The data center issue, for now, is up for grabs. Either party could take the lead against AI cost increases to the taxpayer.
AI as a campaign tool
It's a different story when it comes to using AI as a tool for branding and ad creation in the campaign world. Republicans, who have embraced AI, seem to have to advantage.
With some exceptions, professional Democrats have expressed reservations about the technology.
"Democratic operatives — many wary of privacy risks and worried what AI could mean for their jobs — have been much slower to adopt the technology in their campaigns," Axios reported.
The National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC) has developed a playbook for how Democratic campaigns use AI. That playbook, Wired found, “points out ways Democrats shouldn’t use AI and discourages candidates from using AI to deepfake their opponents, impersonate real people, or create images and videos that could ‘deceive voters by misrepresenting events, individuals, or reality. This undermines democratic discourse and voter trust,’ the training reads.”
Small “d” democratic discourse has already been undermined by social media, the cable news, and Donald Trump.
Dismissing the emergence of new media and tech tools for campaigning today is like rejecting the use of radio for electioneering in the 1930s and 40s.
I'm all about reigning in AI as a policy matter. It needs governance that protects innovation and the tech's immense potential. But do that legislatively. Not during the most important election of our lifetimes.
AI in Message Development: A Practitioner's Guide
With the oversight of a messaging strategist, artificial intelligence can assist in the daily work of political and policy practitioners.
With the oversight of a messaging strategist, artificial intelligence can assist in the daily work of political and policy practitioners. The purpose of using one of the Big Three (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) AI platforms for communications work is to expand creative options, particularly when it comes to finding common narratives and talking points the broad public can identify with. For this issue brief, I am looking only at political (external) communications tasks—not other political tasks, like policy development or fundraising—both topics for another day.
The Craft of Persuasive Communications
Before getting into AI’s role, it’s worth being clear about the craft of persuasive or advocacy communications aimed at the general public. The craft is tech-agnostic. The same principles—logos, pathos, ethos—that Aristotle illuminated 2,000 years ago are generally the same today. With or without AI, with or without social media, the bedrock of public communications remains constant.
And that bedrock is this.
The well-educated brain is taught to make an argument and back it up with evidence. Professions in law, medicine, science, and business demand it. But public persuasion—which is a large part of civic sector work—requires a somewhat different approach. You can’t just dump data or evidence into the public domain and expect to win people over and mobilize them. You have to tell a story. The human brain is wired for stories.
(Worth watching: Stacey Abrams, a powerhouse communicator and novelist, on the power of storytelling. Or David Axelrod over at MasterClass on campaign storytelling.)
People need a narrative to connect with—one that resonates with emotion and simplicity.
Science and medicine are notoriously bad at communicating concepts to the public. Why? They’re too data-heavy. Sally Susman, executive vice president at Pfizer, was tasked with persuading 100 million Americans during the pandemic to take a new vaccine—and do so quickly. Her book, Breakthrough, details how Pfizer broke through to the public by, as she said on a podcast, ripping up the original playbook of scientific data and expert opinions.
“I was wrong,” Susman said. “It’s stories—like ‘I got to see my grandson at his wedding.’ Real stories, real people.”
A similar course correction happened with marriage equality. The LGBTQ movement initially focused its message on the 1,000-plus legal rights and benefits that come with marriage. That wasn’t working. The movement then shifted its message to one of love, commitment, and family—using real couples and their supportive parents, grandparents, and allies in the military and business world to humanize those values. The rest, as you know, is history.
Where AI Comes Into the Picture
With that foundation in place, here’s how the new tool of AI can help execute these principles in the public arena.
Purpose 1: Translating Policy Advocacy into Public Narrative
One of AI’s most reliable strengths is linguistic translation. Policy professionals operate in a world of technical vocabulary, industry shorthand, legal qualifiers, policy speak, and nuance—language that can obscure meaning for broader audiences. AI systems are unusually effective at converting dense policy material into plain English, but only when guided with human expertise. The quality of output is directly tied to the clarity of the instruction. AI prompts framed around audience, tone, and intent—specifying the audience level, voter profile, or emotional register, for example—yield far more useful results than broad direction.
Here’s a test I ran on voting rights messaging (a topic I don’t have deep expertise in, which is why I chose it). Showing my work: below are three of ChatGPT’s responses, which I have edited. AI can’t quite get the words right, at least for my ear.
- The Fairness Story: America works because we all play by the same rules. No matter your education level, race, or where you live, all eligible voters should have the same opportunity to cast a ballot. You can’t make voting harder for some and easier for others. Fairness and consistency are essential to the American system.
- The Civic Story: The Constitution established a system where power flows from citizens, not rulers. Over generations, Americans expanded that promise—eliminating property restrictions, guaranteeing women’s suffrage, dismantling racial barriers. Safeguarding voting rights today is simply the modern expression of that same constitutional commitment: equal protection.