The Empty Quadrant:
A Progressive Case for AI Abundance

The 2028 Democratic primary conversation begins in earnest within the year, and the midterms are here. Progressives are walking into both unprepared — not because they lack moral conviction, but because they've failed to pair that conviction with a credible theory of how to actually generate the prosperity they want to distribute.

This is a problem. And it's solvable. But solving it requires the progressive movement to do something uncomfortable: fully embrace artificial intelligence as the most powerful engine of abundance in the history of humankind, while simultaneously demanding — with real teeth — that the abundance it creates is equitably shared.

Before going further, a distinction that this essay depends on: artificial intelligence is not the companies currently building it.

This matters because progressive skepticism of Big Tech — of Meta, of Google, of OpenAI, of the handful of firms consolidating capital and influence at historic speed — is entirely warranted. These companies should be held to much higher standards on taxes, labor practices, human rights, transparency, and equitable distribution of the value they generate. That fight is real, and progressives should wage it.

But that fight is not the same as a fight against AI. The technology is something different from the institutions that happen to be producing it right now. Electricity was not General Electric. The internet was not AOL. And AI is not the current roster of frontier labs, however much they'd like it to be.

When progressives treat AI itself as the adversary — rather than treating the concentration of its benefits as the adversary — they end up opposing the only engine capable of generating the prosperity they're fighting to distribute.

Picture a simple framework. The vertical axis is commitment to an abundance agenda — the willingness to build aggressively, to invest in infrastructure, energy, technology, and the systems that generate prosperity. The horizontal axis is commitment to equity — the insistence that prosperity is distributed fairly, that healthcare is universal, that rights are protected, that taxation is progressive, that the economy works for everyone.

Now place the major political factions.

Top left — the Republican party. In theory, the party of free markets and deregulation. In practice, MAGA-era conservatism is protectionist, hostile to the immigration that fuels labor markets, indifferent to infrastructure, and willing to impose tariffs that are literally policies of chosen scarcity. On equity, there is no pretense. This is the natural evolution of free-market ideology without a commitment to equity: the pursuit of abundance, untethered from any obligation to share it, concentrates power among those who already have it.

Bottom right — the progressive party, today. This is where the moral clarity lives. Sanders, AOC, Mamdani — leaders willing to take genuine stands on wealth inequality, healthcare, labor rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and the structural injustices that define American life. The progressive commitment to equity is real and it matters. But on abundance, the progressive left is increasingly positioning itself as an obstacle. When leaders call for pausing all data center construction — as Sanders and AOC did with the AI Data Center Moratorium Act in March 2026¹ — they aren't protecting the future. They're ceding it. You can't distribute prosperity you refuse to generate.

Bottom left — the soft center of the Democratic Party. The Newsom, Shapiro, Schumer, Ken Martin wing. They poll-test their way to positions that offend no one and inspire no one. They use the language of universal healthcare and progressive taxation in campaigns, then shelve it in governance because it would upset their donors. Their function in the party is management, not leadership. They manage decline politely.

Top right — the empty quadrant. High commitment to abundance. High commitment to equity. The willingness to build aggressively and the insistence that what gets built serves everyone. No major group in American politics is credibly occupying it. And it is exactly where the progressive movement should plant its flag.

Progressives need two co-equal commitments.

The acceleration is already real. The first drug with both target and molecule designed entirely by AI completed Phase IIa trials in 2025.² Materials discovery is compressing from decades to months.³ Pair political will with a technology whose capabilities compound on themselves, and scarcity becomes a choice. Accepting that choice is a moral failure.

People are born into vastly different circumstances. Some barriers are natural — disability, geography, the accident of poverty. Others were built on purpose — laws and systems that have limited access for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ Americans, and plenty of others. The result is unequal access to wealth, healthcare, education, and opportunity. That's not an abstraction. It's people dying of treatable diseases. It's children whose potential is wasted before they turn ten.

The progressive job is to fix that, by designing where prosperity flows. Progressive taxation funds public goods. Universal healthcare decouples coverage from employers. Labor protections give workers a seat at the table. Civil rights law removes barriers that shouldn't exist. Reinvestment requirements make sure the communities generating wealth share in it.

The libertarian answer is: generate abundance, and the market will sort it out. It won't. It never has. Without deliberate design, abundance flows to whoever already has the most. The progressive job is to build the channels that send it somewhere else — not by restraining capitalism, but by aiming it at more people.

So what does the abundance commitment actually look like in practice? It starts with refusing the instinct to pause.

AI isn't a policy topic to have opinions about. It's a transformation already underway. The question isn't whether it happens — it's who shapes it, and toward what ends. Right now, progressives are answering by default: someone else will, because Sanders and AOC were too busy introducing moratorium bills.

Take the data center debate. The environmental concerns are real. But a unilateral pause doesn't solve them — it just cedes ground. China's top firms are investing over $70 billion annually in AI infrastructure.⁴ Saudi Arabia has committed over $100 billion.⁵ A moratorium is energy policy as unilateral disarmament.

The progressive response should be sharper:

Set the moral standard, then build the bridge to meeting it.

The same logic applies to AI regulation broadly. Lawmakers in 45 states have introduced 1,561 AI-related bills in 2026 alone, on top of 1,208 in 2025.⁶ Who can afford that compliance burden? The largest incumbents. Every layer of AI-specific regulation risks becoming a moat dressed up as accountability.

Companies are already accountable under labor, civil rights, and consumer protection law. AI doesn't change the obligation — it changes the scale and speed of harm. So sharpen enforcement, fund rapid auditing, and demand real transparency. Regulate the outcomes, not the tools.

This is what progressive abundance looks like: not pausing the future, not handing it to incumbents, but building it on terms that make it work for everyone.

This is where progressives have the most to offer, and the hardest work to do.

AI will eliminate jobs. A lot of them. A customer service rep in Phoenix who took the job because it had benefits. A paralegal in Cleveland three years from her pension. A graphic designer in Austin who just signed a lease. These are the people the next five years hit first, and they deserve more from us than "we tried to stop it." They deserve a vision where their lives are measurably better in five years because of our agenda — not despite it.

The instinct to protect them is right. The method matters. The workers who built carriages did not stop the automobile. The question was always whether the transition destroyed their lives or built them new ones. That's the question now.

Slowing AI down is not solidarity. It's denial. The real work is building the infrastructure that makes the transition survivable:

Tech companies have to be transparent about what's coming and which industries get hit. Unions have to evolve from blocking change to shaping it — fighting for retraining, reskilling, and new bargaining structures. Government has to build safety nets that move at the speed of disruption: extended unemployment tied to retraining, benefits that travel with workers instead of jobs, education systems that can retool a workforce in years instead of decades.

None of this works if the parties keep fighting each other. Tech treats labor as an obstacle. Labor treats technology as an enemy. Government takes money from both. That's the current dynamic, and it's failing everyone in it.

Progressives are the only faction with the standing to demand equity from tech, the trust to bring labor to the table, and the will to build the public infrastructure that holds it together. If we don't do this — urgently, imperfectly, starting now — nobody will.

The 2026 midterms and the 2028 Democratic primary will define the party's direction for a generation. What the moment demands is a new archetype: candidates with Sanders-level moral clarity and a fundamentally different relationship with technology and markets.

Imagine a midterm slate and a primary where the serious contenders include figures like AOC, Ro Khanna, or candidates with the kind of pragmatic progressivism Talarico represents — leaders who share a moral foundation but bring different approaches, different theories of change. Races where the debate isn't whether equity matters (it does) or whether AI is dangerous (it can be), but how to build an abundance agenda and ensure it's equitably distributed.

This is not about any single candidate. It's about the framework they run on, and about the willingness to evolve. The technology is moving at a pace that makes political cycles look glacial. A position on AI that made sense twelve months ago may be obsolete today. A leader who staked out a cautious, skeptical stance on AI in 2024 should not feel obligated to defend it in 2026. The responsible thing is to change — not to abandon principles, but to update the strategies that serve them.

What we cannot afford is another cycle dominated by the soft center. The Newsoms, the Shapiros, the Schumers — they had their moment. That moment produced neither the prosperity nor the justice the country needs. Find moral clarity. Find strategic courage on technology. Or step aside for those who have both.

Any serious progressive candidate in 2026 or 2028 should be prepared to commit to the following.

The progressive movement has the values to ensure the most powerful technological transformation in modern history serves everyone — not just the wealthy, not just the technologically literate, not just the lucky. That architecture is real, it is tested, and it is the single greatest political asset the progressive left possesses.

But moral architecture without an engine is a blueprint for a building that never gets built. AI is the engine. Abundance is the project. And equitable distribution is the commitment that makes the whole thing worth doing.

That's not acceptable. There are too many people counting on a better world for the people with the best values to be the ones standing in its way.

A world where the construction worker whose job got automated away last year is retraining on full pay. Where the data center going up outside her town is funding her kid's pre-K. Where the teacher, the firefighter, the nurse — the people who actually know what's broken — have the capital and the tools to build solutions, not just a ballot box and a prayer. That world is buildable. Nobody is building it.

The quadrant is empty. Fill it.