David Sirota

[locks]

I was happy to hear from David Sirota's email that Bernie Sanders had hired him as a campaign speech writer. And totally surprised and dismayed that apparently he had written for a racist 20 years ago. I have followed him closely for many years and feel Colorado and the nation have been blessed to have him working and writing for our most democratic and progressive policies and elected officials. I have never heard him or read a racist word in all these years and Colorado is already gaining from the election of his wife Emily to the Colorado legislature as she introduces bills and works for all the policies like health care, education, and equality that we and Bernie Sanders care about. Do you think it would help if Coloradans who know him well wrote to Sanders, the Post, and Colorado representatives?

[Skidmore]

1. Sirota and Sanders

will get long overdue vettings this season. I know nothing about Colorado politics or Sirota's wife. She is not responsible for his words or deeds. Sanders' wife, on the other hand, has been a partner in many of his activities.

I am a believer that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. While a person is allowed to change or evolve, their actions must bear witness to that change. Both of these men have not demonstrated they deserve my respect, and Sanders has not earned my consideration for office.

[ehrnst]

2. Indeed. (nt)

[George II]

5. As a long time horse race fan, past performance (behavior) is the cornerstone of judging....

....horses and people. One's opinions many "evolve", but not his/her tactics.

[George II]

10. A man's (or women's) spouse isn't necessarily an indication of a person's politics. A few examples:

James Carville and Mary Matalin
John Avlon and Margaret Hoover

and, most notably these days:

George Conway and Kellyanne Conway

[Hortensis]

3. No. As Skidmore says. What would help would be for

this aspect of Sanders' 2016 and 2019 campaigns to disappear entirely from public discourse. But this is just the beginning.

Sanders isn't the shiny new object the MSM needed to create drama and controversy on the left any more, but he is a national name ready for the treatment they typically dish to boring old candidates.

Also, this time he's not the "either" used defeat Hillary's Democratic Party "or" for the big money who own most of the MSM. That one's big.

So they're beginning to report the good stuff they hid before. There's so much genuine, clickable dirt to report on Sirota, et al. In fact, note that this story goes 20 years back, not just 3. What else is back there?

"Toto, I don't think we're in 2016 any more."

[BlueFlorida]

4. bwahahaha

Sirota is a perona non grata in Democratic circles because he advocated voting for Stein.

Come on, you couldn't have posted that OP with a straight face on DU.

[George II]

6. Sirota was FIRED from a campaign 20 years ago for his racist writings and phony...

....website.

Shortly after that he was hired for the first time by Sanders.

Within hours of being hired again by Sanders a few days ago he deleted more than 20,000 tweets from his account, virtually all of them. This is not the behavior of a good guy.

[still_one]

7. Are you talking about the Sirota who voted for Jill Stein in the GE? Thank-you for telling us who

you admire

[Cha]

8. sirota is a 3rd party stein voter whose

LIES got us trump.. And, whose own lies about Hillary assisted Russia in Rigging in trump..

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

The Hatemongering really worked.

Second, a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters weren’t big fans of Clinton. So Stein campaigning on the idea that Clinton and Trump were similar made it harder for Clinton to win over those voters — even if Sanders voters didn’t vote for Stein, they may have stayed home out of disgust.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/jill-stein-democratic-spoiler-or-scapegoat/

Sirota was Fired for this..

David Sirota, then working as the deputy campaign manager for Evans, was part of an effort to cut down White’s support: creating a bogus website, purporting to be the official home page of the White campaign, and using it to promote a racially charged quotation, deliberately taken out of context.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/128736620

[hlthe2b]

14. Yes... this. I used to be a fan of Sirota. He took over for long term progressive radio host,

Jay Marvin, in the Denver area--who left due to serious heart issues.

Sirota was seemingly a progressive asset, then. I don't know what happened, but he's in the same category as Glenn Greenwald with me now-- not to be trusted in any way.

[George II]

9. I have seen him posting racist words on twitter. Unfortunately I can't cite an example...

....because in the two hours after it was announced the he was going to work for the Sanders campaign he deleted virtually all his tweets, more than 20,000 of them. I wonder why such a great guy would feel the need to hide his twitter posting history over the years?

[lapucelle]

13. Bookmarked for the Steven Lesser tweet.

No wonder David the Stein Voter tried to scrub his account.

[Democrats_win]

11. I always liked him on the radio. (RIP Air America. )

The issues raised in the previous posts are mostly news to me, although I've heard rumblings on DU about Sirota's rough treatment of others as a Sander's employee. Mostly when he went off the radio, he disappeared with a few TV appearances now and then. But check out his Wikipedia page! Evidently he's been all over, from Huffpost to Colbert. Near the end of the article, we learn that he was a subject of an episode of the Goldbergs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirota

The thing I liked about Sirota is that he has been right about America's involvement in the two bush Iraq wars. (He's the kind of Liberal I aspired to be.) Radio personality Jay Marvin called him the "smartest man in the world. " The OP says, he "had written for a racist 20 years ago." That doesn't mean that Sirota IS a racist. In fact he has progressive views like everyone. Check out the Wikipedia article.

BTW, Sirota has apologized for working for the racist:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/22/sanders-speechwriter-racially-inflammatory-website-1232953

"In a 1999 mayoral race in Philadelphia, Sirota was tied to a fake website apparently intended to scare off white residents from voting for a black opponent. On Friday, the controversial political aide and journalist apologized for his role in the episode."

[lapucelle]

12. David Sirota voted for Jill Stein in 2016. He disgusts me.

[Gothmog]

15. Sirota is attempting to argue with Nate Silver and is failing badly

BTW, I trust Nate

Link to tweet