It's not looking too good for President Biden's nominee to head up the Office of Management and Budget. Biden insisted on nominating the controversial Neera Tanden, president at the Center for American Progress (CAP).
In a deadlocked Senate, Democrats need every vote in their caucus. And Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said on Friday that he won't be voting to confirm Tanden's nomination.
"I have carefully reviewed Neera Tanden's public statements and tweets that were personally directed towards my colleagues on both sides of the aisle from Senator Sanders to Senator McConnell and others," Manchin said in a statement. "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. For this reason, I cannot support her nomination."
Tanden's Senate confirmation process always appeared likely to fail given Tanden's attacks on prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders and her controversial handling of sexual harassment allegations at CAP, not to mention her long history of attacking Republicans.
ThinkProgress, a progressive news website launched under CAP, released an attack ad on Sanders, noting the senator had become less vocal in his opposition to millionaires and billionaires after joining the ranks of America's wealthy.
In 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that CAP staff was shocked when Tanden revealed the identity of a person who had made anonymous allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation within the organization. A spokesperson said the revelation was unintentional, but CAP staff present at the meeting said it was just another example of Tanden's inability to appropriately handle sexual harassment within the organization.
Tanden's long history of attacking Republicans meant 50 senators were never likely to support her nomination. Tanden published a large number of tweets lambasting Republicans, tweets that will probably be deleted if they haven't been already.
Over the summer, Tanden said it was fortunate that the coronavirus surged in blue states first because, according to the partisan liberal, blue states "had the thinking to take action to stop the spread of the virus in their states." Of course, nothing could be further from the truth given what we now know about Gov. Cuomo (D-NY) and his policy of sending COVID-infected patients into nursing homes.
What Tanden's nomination really shows is that Biden was never serious about uniting the country. The controversial nominee can't even bring Democrats together.