Neera Tanden’s Potential Defeat Should Be a Victory For Progressives. But It’s Not.
As I write this, the fate of President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, remains unknown. At least one Democrat — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who would have been comfortably in the center of the Republican party of thirty years ago — has already said he will vote against her nomination. Some relatively moderate Republicans, such as Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, have also indicated they will vote against Tanden. It is very possible that Tanden will become the first major defeat of Biden’s term. And her rejection is deeply problematic.
Let me be clear that I will shed no tears for Neera Tanden. There are few Democrats who have shown themselves to be greater enemies of progressive values and significant change than she has. She is a close ally of the Clintons, an entrenched status quo neoliberal Democrat who has worked diligently to thwart efforts at universal health care; she exposed the identity of someone who was alleging sexual harassment at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where she is the president; and she opposes raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. She supported the invasion of Libya and, very much like Donald Trump, even suggested that Libyan oil be used to pay the U.S. for taking out its dictator Moammar Qaddafi.
