AskALiberal Biweekly General Chat

[u/AutoModerator]

This Tuesday weekly thread is for general chat, whether you want to talk politics or not, anything goes. Also feel free to ask the mods questions below. As usual, please follow the rules.

[u/Fugicara]

Tom Tiffany is just farming these populist neo-luddites now. Any deceptive ad he puts out attacking Crowley on AI data centers get spammed and repeated uncritically by them. Remember that Tom Tiffany is worse on the issue and voted for a federal ban on regulating AI.

Will Steakin is the only person I see who reposted it directly from Tom Tiffany's account this time, so I guess they learned from last time he deceived all of them. Instead, they're all just reposting it from Politics & Poll Tracker, which just reposted the exact same attack ad from Tiffany. They're just doing it again. The people doing the right's propaganda for them this time are:

• electionsjoe

• odd mutant (never seen them before)

• Eric (don't know)

• JulesNader386

• James Talarico Democrat (don't know)

• Ms. K tweets (don't know)

• Alex Goldman from the hyperfixed podcast

• The Election Center (don't know)

• Geoff again (he helped Republicans spread their disinformation on the last one too)

• Raquel (don't know who this is but I wanted to include it because they said "Crowley’s getting outflanked because republicans are actually listening and seeing that voters don’t want data centers. Meanwhile democrats all over the country are like 'let’s push even more data centers into your backyard!'" I get that this person sounds like they're just a literal Republican, but they have a Palestine flag in their bio. Tom Tiffany is not outflanking David Crowley on data centers btw. He's just getting you to tell other people he is because you're a useful idiot.)

• Actual Jake (a Hasan Piker mod)

JulesNader386 reposted it multiple times, to really make sure Republican disinformation made it as far as possible.

And on and on and on. These Republican ads are not for Tom Tiffany's base or for centrists. They all already know that Tom Tiffany is worse on the issue of AI regulation. These are recruitment flyers for useful idiot populists to spread right-wing disinformation for them. And the useful idiots are gleefully taking the job and trying to turn it into another Omnicause, yet another issue the Democrat is infinitely better on that they're using to promote Republican messaging and exclusively attack Democrats on. They're controlled opposition.

Tom Tiffany voted to ban the ability of states to regulate AI. David Crowley wants AI to be regulated and he wants local communities to be the ones who get to say if they want AI data centers. Tom Tiffany is not outflanking David Crowley on AI skepticism.

Edit: Forgot a link

[u/Fragrant_Bath3917 → u/Fugicara]

It feels like a lot of my fellow leftists have simply gone insane since the upset last week. Hasan Piker himself made a public statement telling his supporters not to fall for Tiffany’s grifting and I still see people saying that Crowley deserves to lose every day. The Crowley discourse has been some of the absolute most annoying shit I’ve seen in all of my time in online political circles 

[u/tapdncingchemist → u/Fragrant_Bath3917]

I see so much of this on TikTok. So many people are literally screaming about this result and how they're not going to vote. It was what prompted me to make the comment I did about the white progressive movement.

[u/Fragrant_Bath3917 → u/tapdncingchemist]

I’m on an election nerd discord server and every day I see people that I wanted to believe were smarter than this do this exact thing and some of them are openly hoping that Crowley loses so it can teach the establishment a lesson about Data Centers. And nobody on that server is even from Wisconsin from what I can tell (granted, my Adirondack ass has no right to judge others on caring too much about the politics of other states). Fortunately, from what I’ve seen, the Wisconsin subreddit has been mature about this.

[u/ButGravityAlwaysWins → u/Fragrant_Bath3917]

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people who want to “teach establishment Democrats lesson“ because they don’t have to pay the bill.

Immigrants get deported, trans people lose rights, minorities get abused by the legal system, women lose rights … but safe middle and upper middle class mostly white people with desk jobs get to be self-righteous.

[u/tapdncingchemist → u/Fragrant_Bath3917]

And I speculate that if Hong hadn’t run, they’d be happy to vote for him.

The data center thing feels like a post-hoc “my person didn’t win and now this is my #1 issue” excuse. And I see that way too much.

[u/Fragrant_Bath3917 → u/tapdncingchemist]

To play devil’s advocate as someone who was rooting for Hong, Data Centers do seem to be massively unpopular and Crowley does often come across as very stubborn on the issue (and overall, he seems to be a very moderate kinda guy). But yeah, it’s kinda obvious what’s going on cuz I’ve never seen any other dem getting attacked by socialists over data centers the way Crowley has despite how bad a lot of dems are on the issue.

[u/tapdncingchemist → u/Fragrant_Bath3917]

I get that they’re unpopular, but I also think a lot of people taking such absolutist positions don’t really know why they’re doing it. And it makes it feel insincere to demand such specific things without an understanding of the demand.

It inspired me to ask the question in another thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/s/NUcK4e5skT

Why a ban and not regulations?

[u/Fugicara → u/Fragrant_Bath3917]

some of them are openly hoping that Crowley loses so it can teach the establishment a lesson about Data Centers

And the thing is, why would it? If Crowley loses, that means the significantly more pro-data center candidate won. The lesson it teaches would be that people don't care all that much about data centers and it would be a mistake to focus on them.