{"id":53226,"date":"2021-02-19T18:09:01","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T22:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=53226"},"modified":"2021-02-19T18:14:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T22:14:46","slug":"dem-senator-manchin-opposes-tanden-for-omb-boss-due-to-overly-partisan-toxic-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=53226","title":{"rendered":"Dem Senator Manchin Opposes Tanden For OMB Boss Due To “Overly Partisan & Toxic” Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

Did Joe Manchin just confirm his position as ‘the most powerful person in Congress’?<\/p>\n

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The West Virginia Senator, who has continually touted his work towards bipartisanship on Capitol Hill…<\/p>\n

“Now, more than ever, we must enter a new era of bipartisanship in Washington. With tight margins in the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans are faced with a decision to either work together to\u00a0put the priorities of our nation before partisan politics or double down on the dysfunctional tribalism.<\/strong>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…may just have cemented his position after saying this afternoon that he would oppose Neera Tanden’s nomination to head the White House budget office, potentially sinking her Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n

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Neera Tanden participates in a panel discussion during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on April 29, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a reminder, here is what\u00a0Glenn Greewald wrote<\/a>\u00a0of the Tanden nomination in November:<\/p>\n

The announcement that<\/strong>\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0intends to nominate<\/a>\u00a0Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget \u2014 a critical position overseeing U.S. economic and regulatory policy \u2014 triggered a wide range of mockery, indignation and disgust from both the left and the right. That should not be surprising: though a thoroughly mediocre and ordinary D.C. swamp creature from the perspective of both ideology and competence,\u00a0Tanden\u2019s uniquely unhinged, venomous, corrupt and pathologically dishonest conduct as a Clinton Family and DNC apparatchik and President of the corporatist-and-despot-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) has earned her a list of enemies far longer and more impressive than her accomplishments<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

When news of her appointment broke, many of the journalists and activists she has spent years abusing, slandering, and lying about instantly stepped forward to compile just some of her worst political and behavioral lowlights. And some preliminary signs emerged that she might encounter difficulty in obtaining the Senate confirmation needed for her to assume this position. The Communications Director for GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas\u00a0announced that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cTanden stands zero chance of being confirmed\u201d by the Senate.<\/p>\n

Former Sanders campaign aide David Sirota\u00a0hypothesized<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cit is not a coincidence that they are putting Neera Tanden \u2014 the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States of America \u2014 specifically at OMB while Sanders is Senate Budget Committee ranking\/chair.<\/strong>\u201d Sirota\u2019s statement suggests Biden\u2019s nomination of Tanden was intended as\u00a0yet more humiliation<\/a>\u00a0doled out to the Democratic-loyal Sanders left by cucking the Vermont Senator even further by forcing him to shepherd the confirmation of\u00a0one of his most vicious and amoral attackers<\/a>\u00a0(who\u00a0Sanders himself in 2019 vehemently denounced<\/a>). But Sirota\u2019s point also raises the prospect that\u00a0Tanden\u2019s nomination could even encounter trouble from that side of the aisle as well<\/strong>\u00a0(given Sanders\u2019 compliant and disciplined conduct over the last six months, it\u2019s more likely we will see him roll out a literal red carpet for Tanden to walk on, gently toss red roses on it before she passes, and then serve her a glass of Chardonnay rather than meaningfully obstruct her confirmation).<\/p>\n

The list of\u00a0sociopathic and even monstrous acts from Tanden<\/strong>\u00a0is too long to list comprehensively. She\u00a0punched one of her own employees<\/a><\/strong>, a reporter for CAP\u2019s now-abolished blog ThinkProgress, after he had the temerity to ask Hillary Clinton in 2008 about her support for the Iraq War (Tanden claimed she \u201cmerely\u201d had \u201cpushed,\u201d not punched, her undeferential reporter). In 2011, as the Obama administration was participating in the NATO bombing of Libya,\u00a0Tanden suggested in internal CAP discussions that the U.S. steal Libya\u2019s oil as a way of reducing the U.S. deficit<\/strong>\u00a0(a story I\u00a0was able to report<\/a>\u00a0only because Tanden had abused and alienated so many of her employees that they worked together to leak her incriminating emails to me).<\/p>\n

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During her tenure as CAP\u2019s President,\u00a0Tanden accepted\u00a0millions of dollars\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>from the regime of the United Arab Emirates<\/strong>, which built Dubai and Abu Dhabi using slave labor,\u00a0along with<\/a>\u00a0massive donations from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, the Walton Family and Michael Bloomberg, while hiding the identity of some of her think tank\u2019s largest donors.\u00a0A huge chapter on the NYPD\u2019s abusive policies toward Muslims under Mayor Michael Bloomberg\u00a0was removed from a CAP report after Boomberg donated<\/a>\u00a0more than $1 million to Tanden\u2019s organization<\/strong>, and he continued to donate even more after that courteous gesture.<\/p>\n

She ordered the supposedly independent journalists of the ThinkProgress blog, including Muslim writers, to stop writing critically about Israel\u00a0after key CAP donors<\/a>, including Barney Frank\u2019s sister Ann Lewis and long-time Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson, complained<\/strong>. She and Wolfson\u00a0plotted in 2016<\/a>\u00a0how to weaponize female journalists and people of color against Hillary\u2019s critics as well to use their identity to stigmatize and thus stop undesirable coverage from\u00a0The New York Times.<\/em>\u00a0In 2018, she\u00a0outed a CAP employee<\/a>\u00a0at a staff-wide meeting who had filed an anonymous complaint of sexual harassment and retaliation against one of Tanden\u2019s male allies. Secure with her UAE-and-corporate-funded large salary,\u00a0she has<\/a>\u00a0long urged cuts to Social Security<\/a>. The list\u00a0goes on and on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Of course, now that her words are coming back to bite her,\u00a0Tanden has repeatedly\u00a0apologized<\/a>\u00a0for the tweets (1000s of which she deleted), some of which\u00a0compared Republicans to evil fictional characters,\u00a0<\/strong>referring to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as \u201cthe worst,\u201d said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was \u201ca fraud,\u201d proclaimed that \u201cvampires have more heart\u201d than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), and comparing then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to the villain in the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d series, Voldemort.<\/p>\n

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