The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

An Embarrassing Defeat for Biden

Posted on | March 4, 2021 | Comments Off on An Embarrassing Defeat for Biden

This failure is an example of Biden’s basic incompetence:

Neera Tanden withdrew her nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Tuesday evening.
In a statement, Tanden wrote:

Dear President Biden,
I am writing to you to withdraw my nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It has been an honor of a lifetime to be considered for this role and for the faith placed in me. I appreciate how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation. Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities.I am incredibly grateful for your leadership on behalf of the American people and for your agenda that will make such a transformative difference in people’s lives.
Sincerely,
Neera Tanden

The White House confirmed the withdrawal.
Tanden was facing bipartisan opposition from senators due to past comments she made on her Twitter feed. . . .
Biden’s cabinet picks have mostly sailed through the Democrat-led Senate. Still, Biden’s choice to lead the OMB, which heads efforts to ensure an administration’s priorities are reflected in legislation and regulations, was derailed when Sanders questioned Tanden about her “vicious attacks” against both Republicans and progressives on Twitter, including “me, personally.”
Manchin’s announced “no” vote against Tanden made her confirmation unlikely given Republican resistance to her nomination.

This is a shades-of-Jimmy-Carter level of embarrassment. Tanden was (is) a credentialed member of Team Clinton, and was president of the Center for American Progress, a Podesta-founded, Soros-funded progressive think tank dating back to the anti-war, anti-Bush era. And she was another of those “historic first” sort of identity-politics tokens. But she ruined her chances by constantly blabbing all over Twitter:

With her withdrawal, Tanden becomes the first nominee to a White House Cabinet post to be sunk by her old tweets, which were sharply critical of a number of lawmakers. Biden’s administration had emphasized the historic nature of Tanden’s nomination; she served in President Bill Clinton’s White House and had experience running a major think tank, and if confirmed, she would have been the first woman of color and first Asian American woman to lead OMB.
But much of Tanden’s résumé was overshadowed by her proliferous online posting — at least 1,000 tweets raking both Republicans and leftist Democrats over the coals — that Tanden quietly started deleting in November 2020.

Biden can barely remember his own name, but the Internet never forgets.




 

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