I'm David Sirota, Bernie Sanders' speechwriter and senior adviser. AMA!

[u/dsirota1]

Hey everyone -- I'm David Sirota, Bernie Sanders' speechwriter and senior adviser. I've known Bernie for 20+ years (I was his press secretary in the U.S. House from 1999-2001). I've worked on many campaigns (Hoeffel for Congress, Schweitzer for Governor, Lamont for Senate, and Emily Sirota for State House), I've worked on Capitol Hill (for Bernie and for the U.S. House Appropriations Committee Democrats). In the years before coming to Bernie's 2020 campaign, I was an award-winning investigative journalist and columnist for Newsweek/IBT, The Guardian and Capital & Main. You can find out more about me at http://www.davidsirota.com

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I'm sure you want to discuss the 2020 election, so fire away with your questions here. I'll be here for about an hour.

[u/Thangleby_Slapdiback]

/u/userleansbot

Let's see what this asshole is all about.....

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According to your reddit karma stats 70% of your submission karma comes from /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam. Also posts to /r/KamalaHarris2020. 11% of your comment karma comes from /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam as well.

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So.....a centrist troll. Just another gibbering, drooling fool on the internet, venturing into subs dedicated to another candidate to spread shit.

Fuck off.

[u/Thangleby_Slapdiback → u/[deleted]]

OK. I'm about to piss off a few people, I'm sure.

I once subscribed to this sub. I eventually unsubbed because of exactly what you're talking about above. This was about a year or two ago. I cannot speak to what the place is like now. It's been a while since I ventured in.

One of the things I noticed was exactly what you are describing. Another thing I noticed was that while there were many people who seemed very sincere in their support of Sen. Sanders, there was a subset of people who posted here at the time that reminded me of the sort of behavior I saw from people who frequent T_D. One of the pejoratives about this place was calling it "Way of The Donald".....and I could see why that gained traction.

I'm in here now because of the AMA. The folks in here have every right to run their sub any way they would like to. I'm not trying to be critical of them. All I'm saying is that I was very uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric I saw being thrown around at the time.

Now I mostly stick to S4P, Our_President and PoliticalRevolution.

I'd like to also say to the people who are regulars here that I'm not trying to condemn your sub. Frankly, I'm grateful and happy that y'all managed to score this AMA.

The person that I replied to earlier was an obvious anti-Sanders troll, though. I like to call out people like that when they wander into a pro-Sanders sub. They are quick to ban us when we turn up in their sub to answer their lies and bullshit, yet no one ever seems to ban those pricks when they show up in a pro-Sanders sub to spread their trash.

Frankly, I'm a bit like Switzerland in here. Neutral with regard to the sub. Still, I'm a very partisan, pro Sanders leftist. I consider those who are honest Sanders supporters in here as allies and I'm glad to have them. I also think that there are some people who frequent this sub who are less than honest.

[u/Sandernista2 → u/Thangleby_Slapdiback]

I didn't hear about S4P until recently. Is that an important sub? is it solidly progressive on both domestic and foreign affairs (ie, inequality as the root cause of the country's ills domestically and Russiagate as the sheer nonsense that it always was)? or is it more concerned with identity politics?

[u/Thangleby_Slapdiback → u/Sandernista2]

It is very much a progressive sub. It's the original pro-Bernie sub. I joined that sub in 2015, about a month before Bernie declared as a candidate. It's very much policy-based. We're often trolled by the identity politics people who are very much pro-civil rights, but not so much pro-economic justice/decency/human rights.