AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article does not imply any political endorsement from Gabrielle Giffords.
Amy Siskind, a former contributor to The Daily Beast who is probably best known for her ill-fated attempt to convince Sarah Palin to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 against a sitting Democratic president, recently criticized Democratic National Committee chairperson candidate Keith Ellison, claiming that Ellison pals around with anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT people:
Siskind wrote two articles for The Daily Beast praising Palin, calling for her to run for the Republican nomination against President Barack Obama in 2012 and calling for her to run on the kind of gender identity politics that Hillary Clinton made infamous this year. For all of the talk from people like Siskind about Ellison’s past associations with people who are anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT (even though Ellison himself is not, in any way, anti-Semitic or anti-LGBT, which is what matters, and Siskind herself is certainly not anti-Semitic or anti-LGBT), Siskind openly called for someone who is anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT to run for president four years ago! Palin has openly opposed equal rights for LGBT people in this country throughout her career as a political figure and a public figure, and, not long after then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ; Giffords is Jewish) was badly wounded in the Tuscon massacre, Palin accused people who were critical of campaign tactics invoking imagery of violence of blood libel.
Since the candidate I originally endorsed for DNC chair, Howard Dean, is no longer running, and Ellison has pledged to be a full-time DNC chair with undivided attention to running the DNC if elected, I have endorsed Keith Ellison’s campaign for DNC chair. Ellison is a take-no-prisoners political fighter who isn’t beholden to the bipartisan political elite or the corporate media, and he’ll fight for a bottom-up Democratic Party led by ordinary Americans who strive for a more perfect Union for all Americans!