The New Republic

Newsweek's Evan Thomas went to Pakistan with Richard Holbrooke. It's an interesting piece, but, what might be most notable about it is how milquetoast a character Holbrooke comes across as. READ MORE >>

Michigan Democrats are worried about their political future--and rightly so. In a state with the highest unemployment rate in the country, the political fallout from Michigan's economic woes seems imminent. Barred from seeking a third term, Governor Jennifer Granholm has left the Democratic field open for the 2010 gubernatorial race-and a bitter electorate in her wake. Granholm's own popularity has plummeted as the economy has faltered, and early polling shows the leading Democratic candidate, Lieutenant Governor READ MORE >>

Nate Silver crunches the numbers. It looks like Joe Sestak's primary challenge has made Specter a pretty loyal Democrat (which is what TNR was hoping for when we wrote this editorial). READ MORE >>

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, Treasury Secretary Geithner--and Secretary of State Clinton--meet with a high-level Chinese delegation. According to official previews (i.e., the apparent contents of background briefings given to wire services), the economic topics are China's concerns about the value of the dollar (i.e., their investments in the U.S.) and the amount of debt that the U.S. will issue this year. This is absurd. READ MORE >>

Ed Kilgore is managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a frequent contributor to a variety of political journals.  For all the ideological talk about divisions among Democrats on health care reform, there are some institutional issues that are equally important. Ezra Klein did a good job of analyzing the House-Senate dynamics over the weekend: READ MORE >>

Is Cheaper Health Care Hopeless? No. And Here's An Honest, Detailed Answer Why, by Jonathan Cohn READ MORE >>

In an interesting NYT Week In Review article about the post-1969 black and Latino elite, Helene Cooper wrote: And it emerged again last week, when Mr. Obama joked in the White House East Room that if he ran afoul of the police, “I’d get shot.” In saying this, he seemed to draw on the fears of black men across the United States, including those within the new power elite. READ MORE >>

Paul Krugman's column today has some good analysis of the House Blue Dogs, who have been raising a ruckus over health care reform. READ MORE >>

Vice President Biden has been taking some heat for the very harsh line he took against Russia over the weekend; his words had the effect of muddling the administration's "message" to the Putin-Medvedev regime. The Times has the story here. Biden's comments to a Georgian audience earlier in the week have received less attention. READ MORE >>

Also on "Meet the Press," David Gregory asked whether she and Obama discuss his health care reform push. "We talk about everything," was her seemingly implicit confirmation. And it's clear, once she starts talking about the details, that being at Foggy Bottom hasn't fully distracted her from what it's probably fair to call the central cause of her adult life: READ MORE >>