Hillary Clinton loyalist Neera Tanden’s nomination to head up Joe Biden’s Office of Management and Budget is off. Tanden has withdrawn and Biden has accepted. The prolific and frequently insulting tweeter found that her Twitter history wrecked her chances.
Biden, or whoever writes his statements, doesn’t seem to be bothered by her acerbic social media presence or her rep on the party’s left.
In response, Biden released a statement saying he had accepted her request.
“I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight into our work,” Biden said.
Whatever role that is, it won’t be one that requires Senate nomination. Tanden’s failed nomination brought about a rare moment of unity from the left and right. The Republicans didn’t like her numerous tweeted, and frankly witless and childish, insults fired off at them. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ideological heart of today’s Democratic Party, doesn’t think she’s far-left enough. She also punched a Sanderista. Allegedly.
Sanders supporters have long had a problem with Tanden, who was accused of punching his 2000 campaign manager in the chest when he worked the progressive news website ThinkProgress. Leaked emails from WikiLeaks also showed that Tanden had called ThinkProgress staffers “crazy leftists” in a series of emails.
To be fair, she wasn’t wrong about that. The “think” in ThinkProgress was always more of an aspiration than a fact.
If you sense a spirit of whatever about all this, yeah, guilty. Tanden was a poor choice, poorly vetted by an administration that makes poor choices its habit and seems to have no guiding principles other than being Not Trump. It does like to kill American jobs. Whatever that is, it’s not leadership. Though, to be fair, Biden’s never been a leader. No one should expect him to suddenly turn into a statesman after a career as a partisan hack.
Biden or his handlers will probably make Tanden czar of something or other, evading Senate input but bringing her delightful Twitter style into government. There just aren’t enough ill-tempered people on Twitter.
His next OMB nominee will probably be even worse than Tanden would have been on policy. That’s how things seem to go these days.