President Biden has nominated Neera Tanden, the President of the John Podesta-founded center-left think tank Center for American Progress (or CAP) to be his Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That nomination requires Senate confirmation and at the moment it appears that Tanden will be the first and perhaps only Biden nominee to be rejected by the US Senate. Her nomination is being opposed so far by Joe Manchin and every Republican willing to take a position. Why? They say it\u2019s due to her toxic behavior online, claiming it\u2019s a sign of larger character issues that would prevent her from working in a bipartisan way. Several Democratic politicians and voters are calling bullshit, but they\u2019re wrong.<\/p>\n

Neera Tanden\u2019s nomination should be defeated and we can find a better nominee. Let me break down the arguments.<\/p>\n

Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “The idea that the Republicans are going to complain over someone who has sharp elbows on Twitter is pretty outrageous\u201d. She\u2019s right on the merits there, Republicans not only ignored but often defended the unhinged tweeting of former President Donald Trump. Even though these tweets provoked international incidents as well as an insurrection this past January. Those tweets were clearly more prominent and harmful than anything Tanden could have tweeted because she was not President.<\/p>\n

However, Warren\u2019s criticism is probably the most blatantly hypocritical of any that we\u2019ll discuss. Warren notably spent the final months of her imploding Presidential campaign complaining about critical tweets from alleged supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Warren made the case on the debate stage, on the campaign trail, and famously on Rachel Maddow<\/a>. Warren used \u201conline bullying\u201d being \u201ca particular problem with Sanders supporters\u201d as justification for winning an abysmal third place in her home state of Massachusetts. The tweets would be the reason why she didn\u2019t endorse the only candidate who was remotely close to her ideological worldview in a two-candidate race. These were tweets from self-proclaimed supporters, not even Bernie Sanders himself. Yet Warren believed these tweets were sufficient to disqualify Bernie Sanders from the Presidency. Therefore, it would stand to reason that tweets actually sent by an individual would be more damaging and surely would disqualify them from the cabinet of a President.<\/p>\n

There are some who would argue that the true barrier to Tanden\u2019s confirmation is that she is a woman and of Asian descent, implying her roadblock is an issue of prejudice. This ignores that Janet Yellen, Jennifer Granholm, and Avril Haines were nominated and confirmed for Biden\u2019s cabinet without issue despite being women. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is black and a woman, received a bipartisan super majority vote. It is not as if racial prejudice or misogyny are strangers to the Senate, but clearly they are not deciding factors in the nominations we\u2019ve seen in this Congress so far. Tanden is failing not because of what she looks like, but because of who she is.<\/p>\n

Some have questioned how Manchin could support Kavanaugh and Fmr. Attorney General Barr but not Tanden. In a world where Democrats are held accountable for bad votes, I\u2019d be sensitive to this argument. However, where was the outrage when 90+ progressives in the House opposed funding Trump\u2019s border camps, while Democrats like Sharice Davids and Emmanuel Cleaver voted for it, giving necessary votes for passage?<\/a> Where was the outrage at any Democrat who approved Trump\u2019s bloated defense budget? It was non-existent because we\u2019ve become just as partisan as the Republicans and we\u2019re more reticent than ever to hold our politicians accountable…unless they betray the home team.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like for a moment to gather some of the twitter discourse<\/a> that has made many, including myself uncomfortable. Tanden chooses to regularly associate herself with people who are on record saying racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and otherwise depraved things.<\/p>\n

Tanden said \u201cHappy Birthday my friend\u201d to \u201cDane Weeks\u201d who on twitter has said \u201cBernie Sanders is a fake fucking Jew\u201d and \u201cBernie Sanders heart needs to stop right about now\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tanden very regularly interacts with \u201c@electricbrotha\u201d saying to him \u201cI\u2019m definitely thankful for your cold fury. And all you\u2019ve done for the Resistance\u201d. On Twitter this person has said, and I apologize for the vulgarities, \u201cgo fuck yourself with crusty the clown Senator from Vermont\u2019s dick\u201d as well as similar attacks targeted towards female journalists he viewed as sympathetic to Sanders.<\/p>\n

Then there are of course Tanden\u2019s own tweets, of which she has deleted over a thousand that range from 3am fights with 18 year olds to criticisms of left wing politics to implying the continued existence of Clinton\u2019s \u201cvast right wing conspiracy\u201d. There\u2019s also an assortment of personal insults for many politicians and journalists, admittedly some funny but most fairly immature.<\/p>\n

Matt Bruenig formerly of the New York Times and Washington <\/a>Post<\/a> said it best, ironically enough on twitter.<\/p>\n

Bruenig writes \u201cWhen people say Republican senators are acting in bad faith about the tweets, what are they saying their real position on tweets is? Are liberals who were mad at Trump’s tweets but not Neera’s also doing bad faith? And what is their non-bad-faith position on tweets? Is Neera herself operating in bad faith by saying tweets should not disqualify her even though she has previously acted in a contrary way? Does she have any views on tweeting per se<\/em>? Neera’s partisans sent tons of abuse to a WaPo reporter who asked Murkowski about a Neera tweet. Lots of people, including Biden himself, have argued that similar events somehow reflected on Bernie. Does it also reflect on Neera? Was it bad faith before or now? If every story should mention the Republican flip-flop on tweeting when it comes to Neera, shouldn’t it also mention these Neera and Biden flip-flops? Or maybe we just realize it’s all bullshit all the way down?\u201d<\/p>\n

What should matter most ultimately is Tanden\u2019s policy record, however. She is a vocal opponent of single payer healthcare<\/a>. She advocated for cutting \u201centitlements” like social security<\/a> in the pursuit of austerity politics. She punched a journalist<\/a> in the chest because he disagreed with her take on Libya. What was her take on Libya? Well it was that Libyans were indebted to us for massively destabilizing their country and they should repay us with their oil<\/a> if we\u2019re ever going to convince Americans to support another conflict, yes literally. When it came to sexual misconduct, Tanden outed an employe<\/a>e who had survived an incident during an all staff meeting. When it came to ethical relationships, Tanden chose Netanyahu in his dust up with President Obama and solicited donations from human rights abusers like the UAE.<\/p>\n

Neera has been more wrong more often than perhaps anyone else in Democratic politics. We shouldn\u2019t reward her for that. Although she will of course be rewarded, if not with OMB then with undue influence somewhere else. However, if we\u2019re lucky and any cosmic justice exists, we will not have to bear the burden of having Tanden in public life after this fiasco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruenig writes \u201cWhen people say Republican senators are acting in bad faith about the tweets, what are they saying their real position on tweets is? Are liberals who were mad at Trump’s tweets but not Neera’s also doing bad faith? And what is their non-bad-faith position on tweets? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":41512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3027,1868,715,1363],"tags":[2186,3605,3606],"yoast_head":"\n