So, the worst “Democrat” in the Senate, Joe Manchin, has come out against Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden, the worst think tank drone ever to come out of the Clinton machine, to head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
What’s more, he has done so for the worst possible reason, because Tanden is mean to Republicans sometimes. (Her venom toward Republicans is her ONLY redeeming feature)
The awfulness of the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia is self evident, but I’ll list a bill of particulars on Tanden: (It’s an updatepast from an old post if it sounds familiar)
- Covered up sexual harassment by senior CAP staff, and retaliated against those who reported it (Including outing one anonymous whistle blower).
- Has called for cuts to Social Security.
- Opposes single payer, while claiming that it might be possible when the time is right (maybe in the year 2525).
- Argued for stealing Libya’s oil to pay for our costs for bombing them. (And creating a civil war, and creating slave markets, and creating a refugee crisis)
- Opposed the $15/hour minimum wage, and then lied about it.
- Assaulted an employee for questioning Hillary Clinton’s support of the Iraq war.
- Her ringing endorsement by William Kristol, the Neocon Moron (that rhymes) nepotism hire who has never been right about anything substantive in his entire life.
- She was worked closely with Bruce Reed on Bill Clinton’s truly horrible welfare “reform”.
- She shut down Think Progress after it unionized.
- Her former staff leaks negative items to the press like a sieve, which makes her ability to assemble and maintain a good staff is suspect.
- Acting as a conduit for lobbying money from the petty Gulf State princes.
I am hoping for a way that they can both lose, because neither of them deserve a win ever:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Friday that he would oppose Neera Tanden‘s nomination to head the White House budget office, potentially sinking her Senate confirmation.
Manchin cited Tanden’s harsh tweets about Republicans as the reason for his opposition.
“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 in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”>br>
………“Neera Tanden is an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent Budget Director and we look forward to the committee votes next week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement distributed to reporters in response to Manchin’s remarks.
No, she’s a vacuous party hack, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The problem is that cannot keep good staff, has never had an original idea in her life, and has an affection for bad policy and bad politics that rivles that of her old boss, Hillary Clinton.
In a CNN interview Friday afternoon, Sanders was non-committal about supporting Tanden’s nomination, saying that he would speak to her next week about “what she wants to do.” Sanders reiterated that he was less concerned with her previous rhetoric than her future actions.
And Bernie Sanders is the only person in this entire sordid affair who is behaving like a mensch, probably because he is the only one in this entire sordid affair who values anything beyond his own career.