This is a contributing editor on Daily Kos.
His Twitter profile, and any political relevance this person has, derives from this platform. He loudly touts his DKos association on Twitter, in his handle. He is listed on the Daily Kos masthead.
The owner of this site has been doing the rounds of various media outlets presenting Daily Kos as a center of Democratic party activism. He’s been touting polls conducted here as an indication of the level of support various candidates have among activists. Implicit in the publicity surrounding this poll if the assumption that the site and its editors are somewhat neutral, if opinionated among candidates.
The site’s mission is to “elect more and better Democrats, to advocate for specific issues, or even to socialize among like-minded friends”.
How, exactly does a contributing editor taking a very public stance that they are “going to fuck Bernie” further these aims? How can this site rationally associate with such a person and justify giving them a platform?
Bernie Sanders is outreach chair for Senate Democrats and part of the Senate leadership. He has caucused with Democrats in Congress since 1991, over 28 years. He received over 13 million votes from Democrats in the 2016 primary. He is a co-founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus on the hill. If he declares himself a candidate for 2020, he will likely poll in either first or second place.
I want this community to ask itself this. Would we tolerate this kind of rhetoric on this site? Should this site tolerate this kind of rhetoric among their editors and front page authors?
Is this the public face of Daily Kos?
If you think this is, consider your reaction if a DKos editor made such comments about ANY other candidate.
Imagine a DK editor making such comments about Kamala Harris, or Joe Biden, or Elizabeth Warren.
This is not a one-off tirade either. Review the comments below and see what this particular editor has to say repeatedly, over months. Replace Bernie’s name with someone you support and decide for yourselves whether this is what the public face of Daily Kos should be.
If these comments were made about any other candidate, we would say it was designed to divide Democrats.
“Bris” is the Hebrew word for circumcision and might not be a typo. The editor in question has a habit of taking the term “Bernie Bros” and changing it slightly in an effort to appear clever.
This is not a single night’s tirade. It is consistent, over months, even years:
Markos routinely retweets and interacts with this editor. Silence is implicitly sanctioning this behavior. It also raises some significant questions since Markos is back on MTP and MSNBC as a surrogate for “progressives”. What should other guests on MSNBC make of Markos and the site that bears his name?
Is this what the site’s leadership believes the public face of Daily Kos should be?
Is this an indication of where this site stands?
How many editors on this site intend to “fuck Bernie” if he runs?
When did this site’s prominent contributors decide rat-fucking Democratic candidates was part of their mission?
Can DK claim to speak for progressive Democrats if its editors engage in this kind of rhetoric?
Has this site learned absolutely no lessons from 2016?
Can it claim to speak for Democrats at all, if its editors slur prominent leaders in this way?
More fundamentally, what is this site for?
Because if this editor retains his position after these tirades, it definitely does not stand for “unity”.
— @subirgrewal
With respect to this editor’s “Bris” tweet. Some have claimed it was a typo. Others, that the editor may have been unaware of it. Whether it was a typo or not, the editor was made aware of it.
Circumcision has been used to identify and target Muslim and Jewish men during pogroms. See this story for an example from the 1990s which is personal because I lived in Bombay and witnessed a chunk of my family being terrorized by such stories, taunts and threats.
“Joking” about this is about as funny as “jokes” involving nooses/lynchings. It is indefensible.
Strangely enough, the editor in question posted this today:
There is a long history of attacks against Jewish candidates using similar imagery, whether or not it’s inadvertent, “Bernie’s bags of money” is an odd thing to say, especially about a candidate who is raising all his money from small donors. Several other candidates have openly courted large donors, they would seem to be a more apt target for a “bags of money” critique.