The Bores loss is disappointing, but NY-12 was a close race between two relatively sane and high-quality candidates, and in actuality not really a referendum on AI x-risk or salience, despite the spending / attention. (more commentary from some rat-adjacent people: https://x.com/peterwildeford/status/2069781365084574098, https://x.com/daniel_271828/status/2069625692271398917, https://x.com/peterwildeford/status/2069821339112763886)

The results in neighboring races and districts are more troubling - NY elected several lunatic third worldist socialists to local, state and federal office last night.^[1]

I think the main takeaway for EAs and rationalists interested in getting deeper into politics should be to move away from political progressivism as fast as possible. For strategic reasons: the NY results show that progressivism without the destructive third worldism attached is an electoral dead end, and principle / correctness reasons: even "good" progressivism is deeply flawed and unappealing as a political system for addressing AI risk and sociopolitical problems more broadly.

From a 2024 survey:

Overall, we find that approximately 55% of alignment researchers identify as politically progressive to some extent, while approximately 80% of EAs identify in the same way.

A lot of AI x-risk-pilled people are wary of polarizing the issue along partisan political lines. But I think (a) it already is polarized somewhat and inevitably will get more polarized, and (b) there's a good case for polarizing to the right, because the policy prescriptions of (traditional / non-populist) right-wing politics are much less threatening to neutrals / skeptics if AI doom turns out to be false, and also broadly correct on a bunch of other important questions.

IDK how exactly this would fit into a practical / short-term political strategy that takes current trends in US politics into account. It seems likely there will be a blue wave in 2026 / 2028, so perhaps the way to capitalize on that is to support and recruit x-risk pilled moderate democratic candidates to run against incumbent republicans (as opposed to focus on races like NY-12 and CA-11 where it is a foregone conclusion that they will be represented by some kind of democrat). A big challenge with that is geographic though; suitable states and districts to contend in are mostly not where rationalists and EAs live, and it is difficult to recruit carpetbaggers and hard for them to win (and for 2026 specifically it's too late).

1. ^{^}

   Technically they won primaries, but in districts where the general election is typically not competitive.