Democrats go after Wal-Mart

Adam Nagourney and Michael Barbaro write in the New York Times that Democratic candidates are speaking up more and more against Wal-Mart for its low wages and failure to provide health benefits to all of its employees. Now, Brad DeLong and other bloggers specialize in media critique, but I can't get into DeLong's website today so I'll have to do my own.

The main point of the article:

"The focus on Wal-Mart is part of a broader strategy of addressing what Democrats say is general economic anxiety and a growing sense that economic gains of recent years have not benefited the middle class or the working poor.

Their alliance with the anti-Wal-Mart campaign dovetails with their emphasis in Washington on raising the minimum wage and doing more to make health insurance affordable. It also suggests they will go into the midterm Congressional elections this fall and the 2008 presidential race striking a populist tone.

Some Democrats expressed concern about the direction the party was heading, saying it could turn back efforts by such party leaders as former President Bill Clinton to erase the image of the party as anti-business and scare off corporations that might be inclined to make contributions."

I wonder why they included that last paragraph. Why not just report the phenomenon without comment? Is there a controversy over this in the Democratic Party that's worth pointing out? Who are the "some Democrats" who expressed concern about the direction the party was heading?

Reading on, Nagourney and Barbaro quote or cite Hillary Clinton and her aides, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, Joe Biden and his aides, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards - none of whom expressed concern about the direction the party was taking. The point about the concerns about excessive populism is totally unsupported.

The article continues

"... Some Republicans said Democrats were trying to appease liberal bloggers, union leaders and an Democratic left wing invigorated by Mr. Lieberman’s defeat in the primary."

Again, no actual Republicans were quoted making this type of statement, and even if someone did say this, why would that be worth reporting?

The answer, I suppose, is that Nagourney and Barbaro have concerns about excessive populism and liberal bloggers, but the standards of journalism prevent them from expressing their own opinions in their story. So they attribute their opinions to unnamed political operatives, and voila, you've got an opinion piece disguised as objective reporting. Or, maybe they just added those paragraphs to spice the story up, add a little zing of controversy. It makes for a very strange article, though.