Kevin Mccarthy Says Both 2028 Nominees Could End Up Running Against Ai

The post Kevin McCarthy Says Both 2028 Nominees Could End Up Running Against AI appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, now chairman of the Alpha Institute, told CNBC on June 29, 2026 that artificial intelligence is on track to become the rare issue both parties run against in the next presidential cycle. That is a strange thing to predict about a technology currently powering the most expensive capital-expenditure boom in American corporate history. But McCarthy thinks the politics have already turned, and that investors with exposure to data centers, chip designers, and the utilities feeding them should pay attention before policy catches up to the mood.

Why McCarthy thinks 2028 becomes an anti-AI election

McCarthy told CNBC, “I’ve never seen one issue flip so hard, and I don’t think you’re going to see one party in one way and another party in another. You could have in the year 2028, both nominees running against AI.” The usual pattern in American politics is that technology splits the parties. Crypto, social media moderation, and electric vehicles all produced a pro side and an anti side. AI, in his telling, is collapsing into a single bipartisan villain.

The macro backdrop is not helping the technology’s case. University of Michigan consumer sentiment sat at 44.8 in May 2026, down from 61.8 in July 2025, which is well into what the index treats as recessionary territory. When voters feel that pessimistic, they look for something to blame, and a technology going after white-collar work makes a convenient target.

The myth-versus-data argument on water, energy, and jobs

McCarthy’s frustration is that the populist case against AI rests on claims he says the underlying data does not support. “AI has kind of become the boogeyman already, because if you think about it, there’s this myth. People think these data centers, you’re going to take your water, take your energy. When some of this data will show that it lowers your energy price,” he told CNBC.

The picture from government and academic reports is more complicated than either side admits. The Department of Energy projects data centers will account for up to 12% of U.S. electrical demand by 2028, and Colorado utility Xcel Energy has proposed an electric resource plan that could add over 6,000 megawatts of new generation, partly to serve data centers.

McCarthy’s labor point holds up better in the current data. JOLTS job openings hit 7.62 million in April 2026, the high of the past year, with unemployment steady at 4.3%. Electricians and HVAC trades feeding hyperscale construction are part of that demand.

The policy-lag risk for AI-exposed portfolios

“I have a fear that the policy has not kept up… we’re living through an industrial revolution that is much faster and policy is not keeping up with it, and there’s going to be discomfort,” McCarthy told CNBC. His Alpha Institute, he said, is trying to “get the policy right before” populism forces reactive rules.

That regulatory vacuum is what should focus investor minds. Executive Order 14179, Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, currently tilts federal policy toward buildout. State legislatures are moving the other way on water permits, large-load tariffs, and residential rate protection, and that patchwork is where the real friction shows up for hyperscalers and the utilities supplying them.

Why investors should care

The trade most exposed to a McCarthy-style backlash runs wider than any single chip designer. It spans data-center developers, grid-interconnection queues, and AI-infrastructure suppliers whose growth assumptions quietly require permissive permitting through 2030.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) sits at the top of that stack with capital flooding the buildout.

McCarthy is making a probabilistic claim about 2028. The investing question is whether the political risk on AI infrastructure is currently priced into the names benefiting from it. His answer, fairly clearly, is no.

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