The Huffington Post, a liberal website, picks up on an article I shared earlier this week with this headline: Does the Democratic Party Have an Indian Problem?
That article follows up on a post I shared earlier this week following Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s visit to Montana. It’s also just one of the choices I think we have before us as the headline of the week.
You tell me which one you think deserves the honors. Here’s at least three options, in no particular order:
1. WSJ’s “Donk Fight!”
2. Baucus Hasn’t Been Called Names Yet
3. Do Democrats Have an Indian Problem
TheBeijinger.com: New US Ambassador Max Baucus Arrives in Beijing, Hasn’t Been Called Names Yet
While we don’t expect Baucus will ever be mistaken as our hosts’ BFF, we hope he’ll be treated a bit more respectfully than Locke was. Popular with Chinese netizens for buying his own coffee at Starbucks, upon his departure in late February, an editorial in state-run media called Locke a “banana,” a racially-charged term.
Baucus was on hand to greet First Lady Michelle Obama in Beijing earlier this week.
The Washington Times adds:
First lady Michelle Obama, her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother touched down Thursday in China for what’s being touted as a weeklong feel-good tourist event, amid increasing murmurs back home about U.S. taxpayers having to foot the bill.
The national media is also not happy with their exclusion from the official travel. Here’s Politico’s Dylan Byers:
On Tuesday night, The New York Times reported that no reporters would be traveling with First Lady Michelle Obama to China, and that she would be giving no interviews while there. Nicholas Kristof, the Times columnist, called the First Lady’s decision “a mistake,” and said it “signals weakness or fear of coverage.” Several conservative outlets picked up the Times report, including the influential Drudge Report, which linked to a Weekly Standard article about it.
The statement that followed did not address my original inquiry. Instead, it offered a formulaic explanation about “the power and importance of education” and “reaching people,” followed by an explanation that the First Lady would participate in open press events and take questions online and in forums.
Wall Street Journal: Donk Fight! Republicans aren’t the only ones with nasty intraparty disputes.
Liberal journalists love writing about divisions in the Republican Party–social conservatives vs. moderates, Tea Party vs. establishment, and so forth. That gives stories about Democratic infighting a man-bites-donk quality. One such story is a feud between Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, the Angry Left’s answer to the Htoo twins, and Matt Bennett and Jim Kessler of Third Way, a Democratic think tank that describes itself as representing “Americans in the ‘vital center.’ “
He’s especially focused on the Senate. In 2004, he argues, “the fact that Republican Bill Frist ran the joint wasn’t the worst of it.” What was really bad was “this motley crew on our side of the aisle: Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, John Breaux, Tom Daschle, Fritz Hollings, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Zell Miller, and Mark Pryor.” Off these 10 more or less moderate Democratic senators (we’d quarrel with Daschle’s inclusion on the list), only two, Landrieu and Pryor, remain, “and Pryor will lose his re-election battle. Maybe Landrieu will, too.”
Meanwhile the ranks of “progressives” have grown to include “Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Al Franken, Martin Heinrich, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, and Sheldon Whitehouse. . . . Only Joe Manchin [is] left at the level of our 2004 gallery of rogues. The caucus has shifted significantly to the left.”