I mean, it’s worth stipulating that there is almost certainly still a Journolist-style listserv still in operation on the left (probably several of them). But it’s impossible to arrange talking points when the members of said list are one-upping each other in a public forum, panicking in the cleverest and most retweetable way possible.
That’s something worth dwelling on a little: Did the competitive nature of Twitter—the rush to be funniest and fastest and most visible—push the Democrats over the edge? “God, Obama is terrible.” “He’s SO terrible.” “He’s SO terrible that he’s like the Titanic!” “He’s SO terrible that he’s like the Titanic crashing into an iceberg made of black holes!” “And the black holes are like the wormhole in Event Horizon and he’s going to go through them and come back all evil and scary and AH AH AH PANIC.” Etc.
