We Just Do the Crimes So Quickly

This week's newsletter covers some ground, so ... lets get into it. All praise to Garrett Graff for writing the words I stole to put in the headline. If you are not subscribed to his newsletter, I have to ask: are you okay?

On the Air

I joined Bob Knorpp's The BeanCast — the long-running weekly marketing/advertising/PR roundtable podcast — for BeanCast 822: Butt-Hole Logos, alongside Saul Colt and Matt McDermott. We got into the growing problem of blocking AI crawlers from scraping content, Meta's new Muse app, and why marketers’ relationship to the content and tech platforms is far more adversarial than they are willing to accept. You can listen here (https://www.thebeancast.com/beancast-marketing-podcast-show-archive/2026/9/28/beancast-822-butt-hole-logos).

The Cloud Isn't Up in the Cloud

This week I talked with Zoe Padgett, who runs public opinion research on SurveyMonkey's survey science team, about three years of tracking how Americans actually feel about AI — and it's a little different from the LinkedIn, "get in loser, we're doing AI now" vibe. The headline finding is a pretty unusual generational "crisscross": Gen Z's trust in AI-generated content actually fell from 50% to 44% between 2023 and 2026, while older generations' rose. Usage keeps climbing regardless, but "concerned" has been the prevailing sentiment the whole time, and "excited" hasn't budged off about 17%. We also got into the impact on public opinion of the data center landrush – the local, increasingly contentious infrastructure underneath all of it.

A few lines that stuck with me:

"Gen Z is just really not having it." — Zoe Padgett, on distrust in AI

"The more we learn about data centers... the cloud isn't up in the cloud. It's here on Earth in our local communities." — Zoe Padgett

Zoe Padgett holds a Master's in Survey Methodology from the University of Maryland and previously worked on federal survey design at the American Institutes for Research and the Department of Education. You can follow her team's research, including the quarterly AI tracking survey and their AI-and-jobs survey with CNBC, at surveymonkey.com/curiosity.

You can listen to the whole episode here:

We're going to talk a lot more about AI, billionaires, and the economy on the show. If you have suggestions of people I should talk to, reply to this email.

What I was reading this week

AI is becoming a genuinely partisan campaign tool - how cool. Politico's look at partisan AI chatbots heading into the midterms should be understood as part of a greater battle all marketers are engaged in to both protect themselves from the dangers of generative or inauthentic content, and leverage it to their own benefit in the never ending Faustian Bargain that is digital marketing. In a world of AEO and GEO, it's no wonder that paid influencers are increasingly part of a manufactured midterm echo chamber. My friends at iPullRank call this "relevance engineering".

The Democratic Party's identity fight continues - maybe when you figure a victory is a foregone conclusion it's fine to keep fighting amongst each other. Who knows, maybe it's even productive to hash all this out. The New Republic published both a retrospective on the "Disastrous Legacy of the New Democrats" and an interview with Lily Geismer asking whether Democrats are still a "professional class" party, which pairs well with New York Magazine's profile of Troy Jackson, "the accidental candidate" in Maine's Senate primary.

Corruption scrambles politics. One signal from voters that (for now, maybe) benefits Democrats is the growing belief that our political system and elected officials (as well as corporations and the very rich), are corrupt. What "corrupt" means is contested; maybe "anti-system voters" per G. Elliott Morris is a better formulation. But there's "legal definition" corrupt and there is "immoral acts paid for with money and favors between a few people at the top with no accountability" corrupt. Doomsday Scenario's formulation describes the whole vibe perfectly: "an explicit strategy of 'we just do the crimes so quickly that we can't be stopped and by the time the courts weigh in, they have no choice but to accept our crimes.'"

"Democracy may not exist but we'll miss it when it's gone."** Several other pieces point at the same underlying democratic erosion story. Axios covered a poll showing Americans' confidence in "the rule of law" declining, Democracy Docket has new polling on how many Americans think democracy itself is in trouble, and Don Moynihan's thinking on what a post-Trump governance recovery might actually require - a combination of strengthening democratic structures and increasing state capacity to govern well - is fueling my interest in a question that is far more important than "who will win the midterms":

What will it look like when "all this" is over?

And now, an actual book recommendation. I've been reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. If you're not already radicalized about climate, I have to tell you this book will do it.

Next week? Health care.

Next week's episode will feature Ashley Kirzinger from KFF talking about health care policy and how it's shaping what voters want. She's amazing, I hope she's my new best friend, you'll love listening to her be smart on this topic.

Follow the show on Bluesky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social

Got a question, a comment, or just want to say hi? Reply to this email — I read every one. Or email me: farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

** Read Astra Taylor's book by this title with me, okay? Let's have a book club.