If you’re invested in tech stocks, Democrats just took a hammer and sickle to your money. So much for affordability!
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1,600 points on Wednesday before yesterday’s 1,833-point crash. Also yesterday, the more tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1,422 points, and the S&P 500 dropped 334 points. Overall, Thursday’s collapse wiped out about $2.5 trillion in valuation. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P are all back up slightly this morning, and markets tend to go up in the six months after all midterms. Here’s hoping...
For now, what’s going on, and why do I lay the blame at the Dems’ feet?
For what it’s worth, President Donald Trump agrees, posting on Truth Social, “The Stock Market suffered one of the Worst Days in History based on the results of the Election.... Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped. Remember, it wasn’t Republicans, it was Dumocrats.”
In a subsequent post, he added, “So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!” Was that aimed at voters?
After Tuesday’s blue tsunami, realization set in on one issue in particular: data centers.
Artificial intelligence — or “super intelligence” — is hugely important to the U.S. economy now, and it will only become more vital. To power that economic engine, and to stay ahead of Communist China, America needs data centers. The problem? A sizable majority of Americans don’t want data centers in their proverbial backyard.
“Last year, 180 new data centers were constructed, marking a 170-percent increase from 2021,” writes Evan Gardner at The Free Press. “Today, roughly 38 percent of Americans live within five miles of one, and seven in 10 oppose new ones coming to their communities.”
Opposition has been building amid concerns about water use, electricity bills, noise pollution, and other factors.
Voters on Tuesday not only elected Democrats who oppose data centers but also overwhelmingly approved dozens of measures restricting or banning data centers. Only one jurisdiction — Harwood, North Dakota, population 800 — voted pro-data center. Development of data centers “stops when I’m governor,” promised Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa. Texas Democrat Representative Greg Casar supports a nationwide moratorium on new data centers, and he crowed, “The revolt against data centers was one of the top issues of the 2026 election.”
He might not be wrong.
“Texas, Georgia and Ohio account for more than 40% of all planned data-center capacity in the U.S.,” reports The Wall Street Journal, and all three just flipped from Republican to anti-data-center Democrat governors. Moreover, the Journal says, “About 56% of voters nationally said data centers were a crucial or major factor in their picks for Congress.”
“There were few concrete details from Democrats elected on promises of everything from outright bans to more scrutiny,” the Journal notes. “But slowing the rapid growth of properties that house the hardware for AI systems could upend one of the main drivers of U.S. economic growth.”
The stock market responded accordingly.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not pushing for data centers in every town, near every school, or on every scrap of undeveloped green grass. Communities ought to have a say in zoning guardrails, and tech companies need to address public concerns about water, electricity, and noise pollution. But when Democrats are out there demanding the nationalization of Elon Musk’s companies, I don’t trust them for one second to have our national interests at heart on data centers.
Speaking of Musk, he posted on X early Wednesday morning, “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
He’s not kidding, and his companies could do it.
Tech companies are innovating in other ways, too. One company, Gardner says, “has built a network of mini data centers that are small, quiet, and slide neatly into a customer’s kitchen.” Many larger new centers have addressed all the concerns about water, electricity, and noise mentioned above — if those concerns weren’t overblown or outright Chinese propaganda in the first place.
The bad news is that tech companies lost the early PR battles. The good news is that Americans are generally a reasonable lot, and as long as the terms are fair, people can be persuaded. If tech companies want to build, they need to win over communities.
But if Bernie Sanders and the socialist leftists headed to Congress get their way, tech companies won’t even get that chance. “Democrats must enact a national moratorium on AI data centers,” Sanders insisted after the election.
Well, that is exactly the sort of policy that just cost millions of invested Americans trillions of dollars.
