The latest quotes from the JournoList emails are on the initial response to Sarah Palin. I remember being shocked at the viciousness of the attacks at the time.
Defenders of J-List have argued that the Daily Caller (DC) is taking quotations out of context. That is certainly possible. For that reason, it would be better if the DC (or one of the J-Listers complaining about the DC) released an entire thread or an entire day or two of posts so that we can get a better sense of the broader context.
Nonetheless, without the broader context, the quotes and characterizations appear to be worrisome:
Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].” . . .
Chris Hayes of the Nation wrote in with words of encouragement, and to ask for more talking points. “Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get,” Hayes wrote.
Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”
Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote. . . .
Time’s Joe Klein then linked to his own piece, parts of which he acknowledged came from strategy sessions on Journolist. “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community,” he wrote. And indeed Klein’s article contained arguments developed by his fellow Journolisters.
I wonder whether JournoList was behind several brief, but intense, herd political attacks on CNBC personnel that at different times seemed to come out of the blue (on Jim Cramer, Erin Burnett, and Rick Santelli). They each struck me as odd at the time, especially because I suspect that Cramer and Burnett were only a few months past voting for Obama.
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