Thread by @frodofied

I'm going through my DMs and have found about eight notes (so far) asking me my thoughts on Amy Siskind. These are them.

I come at this from a different perspective than many. To say that I was a strong supporter of @HillaryClinton in 2008 would be kind of an understatement.

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I've written before how I travelled to several states in New England, well all of them really. Plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania ,and Ohio.

Ten states in all. All on my dime.

I was a Clinton delegate to the Maine State Democratic Convention.

It was a thing.

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My support of @HillaryClinton would move during that election from merely anecdotal to something like a defining feature.

It's important for me to say this because it greatly impacts how I look at this story.

The end of that campaign was hard for Clinton supporters.

HARD.

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Not the least of which was it didn't feel like any of it made sense. They said we were losing, but we kept on winning, we won something like 10 of the last 14 contests.

We won most of the big states: NY, PN, NJ, CA, TX, and, if you include them FL and MI.

At the Convention.

4/

I was devastated by the loss. It had been a tough fight for many of us. I was chased off of DailyKos by what can only be the precursors to Bernie's Bros, I called them Barrack's Boys

Again, and I've said this all before, I was angry at @BarackObama. I was angry w/ everyone.

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I would have never voted for John McCain under any circumstances, but that doesn't mean I didn't threaten to, but it never would've happened.

It took a cooling off period, which featured a week of crying, chocolate ice cream and video captured highlights from the campaign.

6/:

But I was a Democrat. And @HillaryClinton was a Democrat. And @BarackObama was a Democrat.

This is not hard math.

Out of the wreckage from that movement was born the PUMAS. Though emotionally I was probably 75% PUMA, intellectually I was appalled.

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PUMAS were a group of angry Clinton supporters who were not unlike rhe Bernie or Buster's who would come later.

They were going to support McCain or Write Her In or storm the convention. There would come no peace.

It was shocking and embarrassing, and it was dangerous.

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Amy Siskind, it turns out, was one of these. But, it, also turns out, she was the very worst kind of PUMA, which is to say, one who completely followed through on all of her threats.

Her hissy fit was legit.

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When I talk of those days I speak of a moment of release, that moment when I forgave everyone, everything. The moment that I could finally say out loud, "I support Barack Obama," and mean it w/o feeling I was betraying Hillary or my experience.

The day McCain chose Palin.

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I was horrified and offended. I had just spent eighteen months fighting for one of the most accomplished, intelligent, and dynamic women in the world, and John McCain had the audacity to think that this cheap and horrible woman could entice Clinton voters?

It was vulgar.

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Siskind, however, was the opposite. She was somehow able to transfer her full support from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin.

How? And how could you not understand that you weren't avenging Hillary? You were spitting in her face.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Palin is Trump's direct precursor. She was the cocky, inexperienced, political outsider who appealed to worst of Republican instinct: nativism, racism, anti-intellectualism. She was unintelligent an unprepared.

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Palin laid the groundwork for Trump and his politics of poison. She helped normalize the abnormal. Because of her Trump would look less horrifying.

Amy Siskind was ok with that.

And, in between, she was guilty of working diligently to undermine @BarackObama.

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Siskind embraced every mean spirited, false, and dangerous assumption about Obama. Her sea was alive w/ racist tropes. She even did the golf thing.

It gets worse. Siskind became a one woman cheerleading squad for all things Palin 2012.

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That nightmare scenario was a thing she wanted to be real.

And when Sarah let her down Amy Siskind did what any reasonable person with a chip on her shoulder would do, she decided to support Michelle Bachman.

You know, married to a gay, who sells pray the gay away Bachman?
16/

When it was clear that Bachman was running with broken legs, Siskind endorsed Mitt Romney. In her appearances with Fox News she was billed as a Republican strategist.

There is more, but for me it is largely irrelevant, and made especially so by Siskind's own actions.

17/

There was a way to approach her history, inc. it's errors that might've been a net positive for everyone.

Maybe, "look, these are the choices I made, some I made from a place of anger, and I acknowledge them & I'm embarrassed by them, we need to fight this man together."

18/

Her defense so far is to vaguely suggest that her support of some of these women is the result of the non-profit she fronts, called The New Agenda. The group was formed by 30 other PUMAS. And, while she is correct, that as a non-profit, The New Agenda must by bi-partisan...

19/

the group still gets to decide who deserves their support. They obviously can't & don't make endorsements for every female candidate in both parties.

Choices are made. She chose Palin & Bachman. But also McCain & Romney.

She thought both would be better stewards than Obama.
20/

Amy Siskind returned, unsurprisingly, to the Democratic Party & Hillary Clinton in 2016. She did the work she could do to elect Hillary.

But that doesn't erase the previous 8 years, nor does it erase her attitude & thoughts on word choice etiquette, or confronting her past.

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All if it makes question her motivation on everything since, even her resistance to Trump.

She wanted Sarah Palin to challenge President Obama in 2012 and she wanted her to win. A Palin Presidency would have looked remarkably similar, & presumably would have celebrated it.

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Amy Siskind spent 8 years resisting Obama b/c he beat Clinton.

Is it possible she is simply repeating the same cycle?

The List has been an important document for our times, but like many things in this world it might be best to admire it for what is, and not the who of it.

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In their defenses of Siskind many have tried to use the idea of evolution as the base reasoning for her behavior, but Amy Siskind is doing pretty much the same thing in 2017 that she did in 2009, which is to strike out against Trump as she had Obama.

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Plus evolution would suggest a greater level of change over a longer period of time.

Barack Obama was only two years ago. And he earned the respect that Siskind always denied and instead gave to Palin and Romney.

I'm going to keep the list, but for now Siskind is blocked.

25/

Her support of Palin and Bachman render her anathema.
In all kinds of ironic irony that irons everything with iron her support of them legitimized their presence & allowed them to trash Clinton & Democrats, which only contributed to making Clintons path in 2016 more difficult.
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