Manchin Opposes Tanden for OMB
The Senate's last conservative Democrat is taking President Biden's call for unity seriously.
POLITICO (“Manchin to oppose Tanden for OMB, imperiling major Biden nomination“):
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) will oppose Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the White House budget office, casting serious doubt on her ability to get confirmed and making her President Joe Biden’s first pick who could fall short in the Senate.
Manchin’s opposition presents a major problem for Tanden, given that Democrats only hold a 50-seat majority in the Senate. Without Manchin’s vote, Tanden likely would need at least one Senate Republican to back her in order to win approval to lead Biden’s Office of Management and Budget.
In a statement, Manchin said that he had reviewed Tanden’s previous tweets criticizing his colleagues, including Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination. As I have said before, we must take meaningful steps to end the political division and dysfunction that pervades our politics.”
Even in a 50-50 Senate, it’s not inconceivable that Tanden will be confirmed and President Biden could theoretically ram her through with a recess appointment. But Manchin is right here and, frankly, Tanden should never have been nominated.
Tanden is superbly qualified by talent and experience for the job. But years as a professional Twitter troll make her unsuited for it.
Jim Newell summed it up nicely in a Slate piece this past December.
[Tanden] has spent the past four years as a leading participant on #Resistance Twitter, endlessly ready to refight the 2016 primary and general elections alike. She has held little back in describing how she feels about Republican members of Congress “enabling” the president. She has treated some of the most far-out Russiagate theories, such as Russia perhaps changing votes in its interference with the 2016 election, with credulity, and she was holding out hope that the “pee tape” was out there well into 2019. (In her partial defense, you might be extra suspicious too if a Russian “spear phishing” operation had exposed you, personally, to national embarrassment.) She feuded with Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he with her, for years, creating a toxic spiral in her relationship with very-online Sanders supporters. The left has also criticized her, and the think tank she leads, for its often unseemly donors.
Though some on the left, including people who worked for Sanders, took Biden’s selection of their antagonist as an insult, they’re not the reason why Tanden could face a difficult confirmation. Within a day of Tanden’s announcement, left luminaries like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and California Rep. Barbara Lee came out in support of the nomination, as did progressive Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, whom Sanders once cited in a letter to Tanden as “another friend and colleague of mine” that CAP’s news operation had “attacked,” described her as “brilliant and laser-focused on making our country a fairer place for all.”
Tanden, instead, faces a difficult confirmation because Republicans senators, after spending nearly four years having Not Seen the Tweet, quickly advanced-searched Tanden’s feed for any and all toxicity and came up with just enough to make her a central enemy in the looming confirmation battles.
Tanden loved the nickname “Moscow Mitch” when it was applied to the Senate majority leader in 2019, a “Voldemort” whom she also accused of “fiddling, while the markets burn.” She’s described Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a key swing vote on confirmations, as “the worst” and, in a statement following Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation, labeled Collins “the chief advocate for Judge Kavanaugh, offering a pathetically bad faith argument as cover for President Trump’s vicious attacks on survivors of sexual assault.” Much else of what she’s tweeted about Republican senators has been lost in a recent deletion of about 1,000 tweets.
[…]
Texas Sen. John Cornyn called Tanden’s selection “radioactive” and chastised her for her reckless use of social media. “We’re prepared to try to work with the vice president once the vote is certified,” Cornyn said, “but [she] certainly strikes me as maybe [Biden’s] worst nominee so far.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’s in line to be chairman of the Budget Committee should Republicans hold the Senate, at first chuckled when reporters asked him on Monday how he felt about her selection, noting that she’s said a lot about him in the past, but “I’ve got a thick skin.” By the time of his Fox News hit later that night, though, Graham was calling her a “nut job” and implying that she wouldn’t be confirmed if Republicans held the Senate. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton described her as a “partisan hack.” Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who’s poised to chair the other committee that would hold a confirmation hearing on Tanden’s nomination, declined to commit to holding such a hearing and said that he hoped Biden would decide against formally nominating her.
“The concern I have is both judgment, based on the tweets that I’ve been shown, just in the last 24 hours … and it’s the partisan nature,” Portman told the Washington Post. “Of all the jobs, that’s one where I think you would need to be careful not to have someone who’s overtly partisan.”
Yes, as Newell notes, it’s a bit rich for Senate Republicans to have the vapors over some mean tweets give their support of Trump. But Manchin is nonetheless right: if the objective is to get back to something like normal political order, Tanden doesn’t belong in such a public-facing role.
Not only would she be unable to work with Republicans—including the Republican Leader—but she has alienated Sanders and others in her own party. And it’s not as if she was a 20-something campaign staffer. She’s a 50-year-old head of a major think tank.
And, frankly, I’d have a lot more respect for her position if she wasn’t pretending that she’s suddenly sorry for her youthful indiscretion after thousands of tweets in that capacity. Or selectively deleted hundreds of tweets as though there’s no record of them. If you’re going to be an Internet troll, at least own up to it.
I think this is also Manchin publicly emphasizing his independence even as he agrees to support the 1.9 trillion recovery act. Ms. Tanden is a sacrificial lamb, but sometimes a lamb has gotta be sacrificed.
Im good with it…for what I assume is a technocratic position. Technocrats need to stay in the professional subject matter lane and leave the social media warrior lane to pundits, elected politicians, and political appointed politicians.
If Sanders, as chairman of the Budget committee, was standing in her way, I’d agree. He’s one of the people Tanden trolled and it would be fair for him to take the position that he couldn’t work closely with her. But, as Michael notes, Manchin is posturing.
I want people “superbly qualified by talent and experience” in technocratic roles in the government. I also want politicians who can handle having the feelings hurt.
Manchin had no problem confirming Jeff Session and Richard Grenell despite far more egregious histories of divisive statements. So let’s stop pretending this is about unity or professionalism. It’s about white men tone policing minority women who hurt their feelings.
@Stormy Dragon:
If Neera Tanden were a white man Joe Manchin would have no issues confirming him.
@Stormy Dragon:
“Manchin had no problem confirming Jeff Session and Richard Grenell despite far more egregious histories of divisive statements.”
This. Once again, we see Republican officeholders expect Democrats to be better people than they are.
@Stormy Dragon: You just don’t get what is important. So Sessions supported the kkk, its not like he did something important like insulting a senator.
And so is every politician in DC and every state capitol. If “never said anything mean about anybody” is the new qualifier for work in DC, it will soon be as empty as Mitch McConnell’s shriveled heart.
So Manchin is trying to cancel Tanden. I thought that was supposed to be a bad thing.
So nice to see that we’re going to maintain the completely different standards for Democrats and Republicans. Remember, kids, bipartisanship means that Democrats have to live up to standards of moral perfection, while Republicans can shit on the floor and demand the other side eat it.
So far, Biden’s cabinet nominees have been confirmed by at least 56 votes. So the GOPs haven’t been unified in opposition. I’ll wait to see if this is even an issue. And as @Michael Reynolds: said, it’s Manchin just putting on a show for the home folk.
And what @wr: said. You know what would be unifying? If a GOP, say Romney, stood up and said, “President Biden is facing three crises, the pandemic, the economy, and our extreme partisanship. The country succeeds only if the President succeeds. I have issues with Neera Tanden, but in these trying times President Biden should have the team he wants. I will vote to confirm.”
@Michael Reynolds: Yeah and for that profile they should be able to find a rather better woman even – without that particularly baggage. Not a hill to die on.
@gVOR08: Why should he for a relatively non-core position. Stupid waste of his own political capital.
Really, silly for anyone to particularly spend much time on this.
@Michael Reynolds:
Hey Michael, I thought you were big on calling out cancel culture. Now that its a woman of color being cancelled, you seem to okay with it. I guess in your eyes cancel culture is only for white men.
@Loviatar:
Oh, stop it. It’s politics not cancel culture. That’s the kind of silliness that belongs on Twitter. And it sure as hell does not justify a drive-by slur suggesting I’m racist.
@Loviatar:
Here, learn something about politics:
@Michael Reynolds:
The last Defense Secretary denied confirmation was John Tower more than three decades ago, and there hasn’t been a single Secretary of State denied confirmation in the entire history of this country. Stop acting like Republicans meeting minimal normal behavior standards like it’s some sort of gift to the Biden administration.
I agree, if there is a way out of this mess someone needs to be willing to step a rung down on the escalation latter, always, even when it isn’t justified and/or doesn’t seem to work.
I remember someone writing about youthful indiscretion and Rush Limbaugh in their push back to the factual recounting of Limbaugh’s misogyny, racism and homophobia in his obituaries. Then it was about how they’ve grown and they have a different prescriptive on things, I guess apologies and forgiveness for thee and not for the woman of color.
@Stormy Dragon:
Perhaps you could point out exactly where I said any such thing.
It’s not a gift, and it’s not a racist attack, it’s fucking politics, and BTW, Manchin is not a Republican. Let me tell you who Manchin is. He is the single most powerful person in the US Senate. Democrats control the Senate only so long as Joe Manchin says they do.
So far Manchin has agreed to supporting the recovery act through reconciliation, IOW, he’s making it possible. So if Manchin needs to kill a nomination to keep his bona fides with his voters, who the hell cares about Neera Tanden? We have bigger fish to fry. There are 330 million Americans who desperately need that bill.
But hey, let’s absolutely demonize Manchin. Maybe we can get him to switch parties. And then we can pass zero legislation and help no one.
@Loviatar:
Tanden’s tweets were made in the immediate period prior to the nomination, when she was 46-50. The Limbaugh quotes in question were from the early 1970s, when he would have been in his early 20’s and in a radically different zeitgeist. Beyond that, my argument there was simply between what constituted a fact that should be in an obituary vs. an opinion or conclusion better reserved for the op-ed pages.
Today’s Life Lesson: There are still different standards for men and women, whites and minorities in government appointment processes.
Today’s Weather Lesson: Snow is cold, and rain is wet.
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed. To the extent “cancel culture” has an actual meaning, it’s typically used when some gets fired or piled on beyond reason for a single statement or indiscretion. Tanden, by contrast, spent years putting out thousands of tweets trolling Republicans but also anyone who opposed Hillary within the Democratic Party. Further, I don’t think even Joe Manchin is saying that she’s unfit to hold public office even; rather, he’s saying one that requires this much daily interaction with Congress might ought to go to someone who hasn’t spent the last four years pissing off half the Senate.
@Michael Reynolds:
Manchin IS going to switch parties. The only question is how long the dems allow themselves to be blackmailed first.
Ultimately, doing nothing for two years to avoid upsetting Manchin will hurt the Dems more than losing the senate. Make the GOP own their obstruction instead of the Dems obstructing themselves and letting the GOP run on empty promises to get things done
@Michael Reynolds: / @James Joyner:
Democratic Senator Manchin votes for Trumps’ highly unqualified appointees, some who have a worse online presence than Ms. Tandens with the rationalization that whenever possible a president should have his chosen cabinet.
– Yet, now he comes out against Biden’s highly qualified appointee with the rationalization that her presence in Biden’s cabinet would be divisive.
—–
Republican James Joyner wrote post after post decrying Trumps’ highly unqualified appointees, some who had a worse online presence than Ms. Tandens, however he almost always concludes he believes that whenever possible a president should have his chosen cabinet.
– Yet, now he is okay with Biden’s highly qualified appointee being cancelled because her presence in Biden’s cabinet would be divisive.
—–
Michael Reynolds has written comment after comment on the danger of cancel culture, how the lefties are overreaching and in their unrestrained attempt to cancel anyone who disagrees with them or says something deemed controversial they are destroying American society (a little hyperbolic, but you get the gist).
– Yet, now he is comfortable with Biden’s highly qualified appointee being cancelled because according to his trained political analysis, its only”politics” and her presence in Biden’s cabinet would be divisive anyway.
——-
I have no faith that Manchin or Joyner will see the double standard they’re employing, their brains are just not wired to see it. Michael however I’m going to hold out some hope that maybe you’ll come to see the double standard on your own or at least reach out to the women in your life and ask them what they think of the situation.
@Stormy Dragon:
I’d rather the Dems be blackmailed by Manchin and large parts of Biden’s program get passed, than him switch parties now or not go along with most of Joe’s program. The fact that he is still a Dem Senator from WVA is in itself amazing.
Unless Dems have 55-ish seats in the senate, they can’t afford to piss anyone off. Beside Manchin, Tester, Sinema, Kelly and Ossoff all need to stay close to the center and pay attention to what is popular in their states, Warnock should as will, but won’t.
Tanden? Live by the tweet, die by the tweet. She’s smart and will land on her feet somewhere.
Up front, I like Neera Tanden. However, some of her tweets were shitty. I criticized Trump and others for their shitty tweets. Many of Tanden’s were to “own the Conservatives”, and they were done very, very recently.
Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes.
Move on, Mr. President. Not worth expending even one ounce of political capital on.
@Loviatar:
BS. Sorry. But BS.
@EddieInCA:
Where is the BS?
– Have I misstated or misconstrued Senator Manchin’s votes or comments?
– Have I misstated or misconstrued James Joyner’s posts or comments?
– Have I misstated or misconstrued Michael Reynolds’ comments?
The standards they’re attempting to hold President Biden’s cabinet appointee to, Ms. Tanden (a woman of color), are they not different to the standards they held the white men Trump appointed to his cabinet?
Please, tell where is the BS?
@James Joyner: ok…I gotta step in on that “early ’70’s” and “20 years old” deflection you still want to deploy. First, I worked in radio as a broadcaster from the age of 16-21. You know what never crossed my mind? Saying a caller needed to remove the bone from his/her nose. Also, a bunch of those quotes were from his supposedly “enlightened” time of the early 90’s, and his post hoc rationalizations of “barack the magic negro” don’t mean a thing. Especially since the column he and you used to defend him was an explanation of a possible phenomenon, while his use was to attack. I get it james, your favorite stand up comic in college was a piece of shit and it pains you to admit it. I used to laugh at andrew dice clay when I was 13 or so, but I would never defend anyone that called him out for the crapball he is.
@EddieInCA:
P.S.
Like you, I believe name calling on twitter is childish and stupid and normally I would be in the – play stupid games, win stupid prizes – camp. Unfortunately for me, I’m here defending Ms. Tanden from the usual white male double standard BS.
Poor judgement by Tanden on her comments. A huge bonus for Manchin in that he can go after a woman of color. In a state like WV that earns him massive bonus points.
Life isn’t fair. In a perfect world Manchin would be asked a couple times a day for a week why he supported a fairly open racist like Sessions for the position of CHIEF Law Enforcement Officer of the United States.
Senator Sinema would like a word.
I’m ok with Manchin doing this. OMB is the wrong spot for a firebrand, and there are other spots where Tanden would be a better fit until she demonstrates an ability to work well with others.
And, Manchin is a Democrat in WV, and he’s going to be a thorn in our side, but is way better than a Republican would be. He has never been the deciding vote on the wrong side of any issue of importance (bring me Sinema saying she’ll kill the filibuster, and we can talk about the filibuster)
@Stormy Dragon:
He is way to the left of the Republicans. He would never survive a Republican Primary.
It’s like he’s being offered a choice of Italian food or worn-out tires with anthrax for dinner, and he wants Chinese. You know where he’s going to land, he’s just going to be a pain about it.
@Loviatar:
Maybe people would rather the white men be held to a higher standard than that brown women be held to a lower standard.
@Gustopher:
Oh, I agree.
I would have preferred that Trump’s nominees had been held to the highest standards and that President Biden’s nominees would then be held to the same standards. However, that’s not what is happening; Trump’s nominees were not held to any standard, while Ms. Tanden’s is being held to this new arbitrary standard. It’s frustrating.
@Loviatar:
Trump Administration:
Monica Crowley withdrew her nomination after it was clear the Senate would not confirm her.
Katherine Hartnett White withdrew her nomination after it was clear the Senate would not confirm her.
Elaine McCusker withdrew her nomination after it was clear the Senate would not confirm her.
Jessie K. Liu (woman of color) withdrew her nomination after it was clear the Senate would not confirm her.
Jennifer Barber (woman of color) withdrew her nomination after it was clear the Senat would not confirm her.
There are many more. This isn’t the hill to die on. And there is no double standard. Shitty people get confirmed all the time. Shitty people get rejected all the time. Nothing to see here. It’s simple politics, not a slap in the face to progressives. Nominate another progressive with the same positions without the baggage. That person will get confirmed.
Unless there is some GOP support we don’t know about, expect Tanden to withdraw her nomination rather than make Biden suffer a humiliating loss.
@Loviatar:
Sorry. That’s flat out bullshit. Here’s a massive list of the Trump nominees who were either rejected or withdrew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_nominees_who_have_withdrawn
There are more than 80.
@EddieInCA:
You kind of making my point, the personal you’ve called out are all women, why were they not confirmed when the Republican senate was approving a slew of unqualified white male Trump nominees. That’s not to say that these women were any shining lights themselves. Here are the reasons given why the various women were not confirmed by the senate.
— Monica Crowley – In December 2016, the Donald Trump administration announced that Crowley would be appointed a deputy national security advisor for the National Security Council. She withdrew a month later following reports that she had plagiarized portions of her 2012 book What the (Bleep) Just Happened? and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation .
— Katherine Hartnett White – In October 2017, President Donald Trump nominated White for the position of White House senior advisor on environmental policy. Her nomination drew controversy due to her history of advocacy for fringe theories and pseudoscience. Hartnett rejects the scientific opinion on climate change and has mocked the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She has called for increased use of fossil fuels, and criticized the Endangered Species Act.
— Elaine McCusker – In November 2019, the White House announced that McCusker would be nominated to succeed David Norquist as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). On March 2, 2020 it was reported that her nomination was being withdrawn by the White House following reports that in 2019 she had warned that freezing military aid to Ukraine might not be legal.
— Jessie K. Liu – On December 10, 2019, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Liu as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes at the Department of the Treasury. The nomination was submitted to the U.S. Senate on January 6, 2020. Some Republicans doubted her conservative credentials and loyalty to Trump. As a US attorney, Liu had overseen some ancillary cases referred by the Mueller investigation including the prosecution of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, as well as a politically charged case involving former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of Trump’s ire.
It seems that these women were either woefully unqualified, crackpots too extreme for the Republican senate or deemed insufficiently loyal to conservative policies and or Trump. Now compare those reasons to Ms. Tanden’s mean tweets.
—–
P.S.
I’m not even going to waste time researching the men, if the women are this bad imagine how bad the men are who didn’t get confirmed.
—–
P.P.S.
Additional reading for you.
Promotions for Female Generals Were Delayed Over Fears of Trump’s Reaction
Pentagon Delayed Promoting 2 Female Generals for Fear of Trump Reaction
You know what always gets me; the casual acceptance of sexism, racism, homophobia or any form of discrimination/double standard. If there is even the smallest possible justification/reason/rationalization so many people will come out the woodwork to dismiss what seems pretty obvious.
The double standard is; Ms. Tanden is being held to a standard that no other nominee has been held to previously. It doesn’t matter what her politics are, I don’t care, this is not the standard that all the white men nominated previously were held to, its not fair.
—–
P.S.
Its going to be interesting going forward to see how this new standard is enforced. With more and more interaction taking place online and the partisanship getting uglier and uglier I’ll be interested to see how the senate handles these situations as they become more common. And you know I’m going to be checking in on my OTB fam to see how they also respond to these situations.
Okay, but was any of what she said a lie?
Of all the Senate-confirmed jobs, OMB director is one that would seem to call for *utmost* deference to the president.
David Frum
@Loviatar:
We will agree to disagree. I agree with that its unfair. I disagree with you that it’s sexist. She gave her detractors the ammunition with which to take her down. If a Democratic nominee to the cabinet has equally shitty tweets and gets confirmed, your thesis will be confirmed. But I doubt it will happen.
I think she will withdraw her nomination. I think Biden will appoint another progressive woman to the position and that woman will be confirmed. Neera Tanden is not worth any political capital. She’s one of the few people in politics who tweeted more than President Trump, by 30,000 tweets in four years. Yes. She tweeted 30,000 more tweets than Trump. That says it all.
@Gustopher:
In the biggest Democratic wave election since 1974, Manchin barely won his election and then only because an unusually strong Libertarian party candidate split the Republican vote.
If he runs again in 2024, he’s going to lose and lose badly unless he can make himself some sort of GOP hero. The only way to do that is by switching parties, and doing it while he’s in a position to deliver the senate majority while doing so. If the Democrats pick up one seat in 2022, he’s toast.
He knows this, and since he seems to be planning to run again, I think he’s going to switch sometime over the next two years.
@Stormy Dragon: Manchin would have to behead AOC with the blade of a windmill, and then shit coal into her neck stump for the Republicans to forgive voting to impeach Trump twice. And even then, a real conservative would have shit bigger chunks of coal.
Manchin is a Democrat. If he’s running, he’s running as a Democrat. And he’s the best Democrat we’re going to get out of West Virginia.
@EddieInCA:
Quite. The position is not one to spend big political capital on for someone who had a bad habit of documenting her sharp tongue. Lesson for the future for male and female pols – Twitter is a bad habit. Period.
Making every bloody thing a big Identity Issue is a characteristic idiocy of the Multi-culty wing of the Left and a route to failure.
@Gustopher: and indeed the left-Lefty Left has a rather hard time understanding to actually win in some geographies, one can’t be running or expecting Hard Left / Purist Left a la ‘progressives’
At this time given the degenerecy of the Republican party, the mere fact that a Democratic party rep is not Lefty Left it is really quite the Own Goal and idiotic to label as “democrat in name only’ (as if one can learn nothing from the destructive results of the Republicans using such RINO labels on their own and where that led them in part).
@Michael Reynolds: “But hey, let’s absolutely demonize Manchin. Maybe we can get him to switch parties. And then we can pass zero legislation and help no one.”
but mate you’d have Lefty Left purity, rather more important. See Corbyn.
@Michael Reynolds: “He is the single most powerful person in the US Senate. Democrats control the Senate only so long as Joe Manchin says they do.”
Actually, the same is true of every single Democratic senator.
But DID SHE LIE???