Inskeep Pops Off

This morning offered a strange segment with Steve Inskeep dogging on Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. What was especially odd was to hear Inskeep going after Emanuel with a mix of left and pseudo-leftist criticism. Here's an example:
Inskeep describes "anger of democratic activists" as anger of "people who are deeply upset with the Bush administration and also deeply skeptical of the centrism that you [Emanuel] were part of....I'll even put it this way, who feel that the Democratic Party sold them out the last several years -- are far too kind to the Bush administration..."

Now this is really odd given that one rarely hears from these activists on NPR -- and moral, progressive critiques of Republican excesses are never articulated by Inskeep. I had to respect Emanuel's response, "what happened after 9/11...a lot of people bear responsibility -- including your profession and mine...."

It is odd, though, that I agreed with Inskeep's line of questioning about the pathetic role of Democrats in opposing the Bush administration, but Inskeep had revealed his ideology earlier in the interview when he asks if it is helping "when Democratic activists bloggers and so forth in your party are perceived as pushing the party toward the left—going after figures like Senator Joe Lieberman...." This is telling! As if going after Lieberman is any indication of leaning "left." Sadly, I think it shows how far, far right the "mainstream" (that Inskeep speaks for) is that Lieberman is considered as anything except a opportunistic, war-mongering rightwinger.

Lastly it was interesting to compare Inskeep's combativeness with Emanuel to his good-ole boy feel-good interview with Dick Armey yesterday. Inskeep might have wanted to do a little research on nasty Armey as he obviously did on Emanuel and the Democrats.