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I checked my phone into a pouch at the door of 100 Sutton St. in Greenpoint on Thursday night, along with about 300 other people, five days before the midterms. It was deep in the so-called \u201ccommie corridor\u201d that runs from northwest Queens through northern Brooklyn, and the crowd for Newsreel\u2019s \u201cMidterm Mania\u201d panel and campaign staff, consultants, organizers, founders and journalists were gathered: the people who make a living off the feed, spending a night without it.<\/p>\n
Chi Oss\u00e9, the youngest member of the New York City Council and a democratic socialist, got the first big reaction. \u201cMake some noise, Brooklyn,\u201d he said when he walked onstage. When he called for Democrats to come out against the war in Iran and part of the room didn\u2019t clap, he had a ruling ready: \u201cEveryone who\u2019s not clapping is supportive of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsreel founder and CEO Jack Brewster had asked everyone who RSVPed, \u201cWhat\u2019s the one election question you want answered?\u201d More than 150 answered, and the walls were covered in Post-it notes. Brewster set up the night\u2019s last panel with his own: \u201cDemocrats are on track to win big according to polls, but they still cannot agree on who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over 90 minutes, the people onstage made his case. They didn\u2019t agree on whether the party is socialist, or on whether data centers are a jobs program or a menace. They didn\u2019t agree on what to do about AI beyond taxing it. What they shared was the goal of winning Tuesday, and the odds look good. The New York Times\/Siena poll released Oct. 21 had Democrats up 10 on the congressional ballot and Trump\u2019s approval at 36%. That leaves the party most likely to take the House without a position on the AI buildout that\u2019s eating up corporate capital spending, at a moment when half of Americans oppose a data center within three miles of their home, according to the POLITICO Poll, conducted by PF Global.<\/p>\n
Whatever you need to do<\/p>\n
Oss\u00e9, who represents Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, dropped a primary challenge to Hakeem Jeffries last year after the DSA wouldn\u2019t back him. Forbes\u2019 Isabel Togoh asked whether it matters if a progressive candidate calls himself a socialist. \u201cThe number one thing that I care about within our party is taking back this country back from the right,\u201d Oss\u00e9 said. \u201cWhatever you need to do in order to do that at this point in time, you know, I do support that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That covered Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat who won his Senate primary with Bernie Sanders\u2019 and AOC\u2019s backing and has since insisted he isn\u2019t a socialist. Whatever El-Sayed is doing, Oss\u00e9 said, \u201cis one that I support in order to beat this fascist, far-right government.\u201d He also said he believes \u201cthe direction of this party will go towards democratic socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n
On AI, Oss\u00e9 said he doesn\u2019t \u201creally understand it that much\u201d and barely uses it himself. He still had a plan for it. He\u2019d call big tech and AI CEOs to testify before Congress and \u201cmaybe be put behind bars for a little bit,\u201d and on Sanders\u2019 proposed one-time 50% stock tax on the biggest AI companies, he said: \u201cCosign and tax some more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The data center lane<\/p>\n
The data-center panel was where the room was most united, and where the party\u2019s own record looked shakiest. Moderator Dominic-Madori Davis of TechCrunch passed along what a private-equity executive had told her: \u201cpeople are not upset at data centers, they\u2019re just mad at AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hilary Flint, who organizes against data centers in Pennsylvania for the Center for Oil and Gas Organizing, said the right tends to worry about eminent domain and the left about the environment, but \u201cI\u2019ve never seen people of all beliefs be on the same page about an environmental issue the way they are on this one.\u201d The Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance group on Facebook now has over 44,000 members from across the political spectrum, she said. Maia Woluchem, who has tracked the buildout in the state for Data & Society, put data centers in \u201ca long legacy of industrial obfuscation,\u201d landing in towns that already have fracking wells in backyards and families living next to coal mines.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the environmental footprint is small. Data centers account for about 1.5% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of global CO2 emissions, according to International Energy Agency data compiled by Carbon Brief. In the U.S., they used 4.4% of the country\u2019s electricity in 2023, according to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, a share it projects could reach 6.7% to 12% by 2028. The load is concentrated, though. In Virginia, data centers already use 26% of the state\u2019s electricity, according to figures Carbon Brief cites.<\/p>\n
Which party is really anti-data center?<\/p>\n
The Democrat running Pennsylvania has been on both sides of it. Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Amazon\u2019s $20 billion data center investment in the state, per the AP. After \u201cincredible pushback,\u201d Woluchem said, Shapiro \u201ctried to reverse that decision\u201d a couple of months ago. Flint said activists have pushed the governor to the point of \u201csaying we have the strictest data center laws in the country, which isn\u2019t quite true, but we\u2019re going to get him there.\u201d Her plan for him: \u201cWe\u2019re going to move him slowly until he reflects his constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morris Katz, a partner at Fight Agency and Mamdani\u2019s lead media strategist, later offered Republicans the issue outright. \u201cRepublicans can feel free to have the pro-data-center lane if they\u2019d like,\u201d he said, adding that Trump-plus-25 districts are in play because of data centers.<\/p>\n
The other side of the argument is the party\u2019s old base. Batya Ungar-Sargon, the NewsNation host who calls herself a \u201cMAGA leftist\u201d and voted for Trump in 2024, said national trade unions are \u201ccrossing party lines for the first time and endorsing Republicans\u201d because data centers mean good jobs for electricians and pipefitters. Katz said the unions \u201chave been forced to the table by failed policies for decades,\u201d by the same people, he argued, who have been screwing workers for 30 years.<\/p>\n
Ungar-Sargon noted that those screwed-over workers have gone to the right. Trump won most voters earning under $100,000, she noted, and Democrats represent nine of the 10 richest counties. \u201cThe far-left has only accelerated the problem of the political realignment,\u201d she said. She pointed to Medicare for All, which she called \u201cextremely popular with working class voters. Until you tell them that their taxes will have to go up.\u201d Katz responded that he didn\u2019t think taxes would go up.<\/p>\n
Katz called himself \u201ca populist who believes we should have a big tent party.\u201d Astead Herndon, host of Vox\u2019s America, Actually, argued that 2024 wasn\u2019t a realignment so much as \u201can establishment collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ask again Wednesday<\/p>\n
Katz threw cold water on a breakthrough for the left\u2019s identity crisis. \u201cEven in the best-case scenario where we win big,\u201d he said, \u201cI think we still need to be ready to have harder conversations about where we go from here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rapid-fire round showed how far off those conversations are. Brewster asked for a yes or no on whether enough new Democratic senators would win to push Chuck Schumer out of leadership. Katz said, \u201cI hope we get as many Democratic senators as we humanly,\u201d before Brewster cut in: \u201cCan not answer.\u201d Asked about Mamdani\u2019s next move, Katz said the mayor would wake up \u201claser focused on New York City.\u201d Herndon, asked who controls the Senate in January: \u201cI don\u2019t want to make a prediction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most specific forecast of the night came from an AI company. Aryan Ranjan, co-founder, CFO and head of AI at the campaign-software startup Baraza, called 231 House seats and 52 Senate seats for Democrats. Ungar-Sargon was the only panelist willing to call the Senate: \u201cI think the Republicans hold on to the Senate, but I don\u2019t know. I could be wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then the chairs were cleared, the DJ started, and I got my phone back.<\/p>\n
#Newsreel #midterms #event #Democrats #data #centers #rich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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