Why are President Biden’s white male nominees for cabinet positions sailing through the Senate with little serious Republican opposition, while his “diverse” and female nominees are receiving vitriolic opposition from Senate Republicans?
No fair, you peeked ahead at the answer.
The racism and sexism of the White Nationalist Trump Party is readily apparent. And that extends to a certain “moderate” Democratic senator from a Red State as well (“You gotta go along to get along,” as the saying goes).
Laura Clawson at Daily Kos has noticed this phenomenon as well. Biden nominees who aren’t white men are mysteriously facing tough confirmation fights:
Go figure. For some reason, the Biden nominees facing the toughest confirmation fights are women of color. And it’s not just Republicans—conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin more or less tanked Neera Tanden’s nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and is publicly hesitating about Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination for secretary of the interior. [This has more to do with protecting the coal Robber Baron’s of West Virginia who contribute to his campaign.]
Tanden, who is Indian American, would be the first woman of color to head OMB. Haaland, who is an enrolled citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary. These are the nominees Manchin has chosen to in the first case oppose and in the second case let it be known he has “remaining questions” and is undecided.
About all that.
Manchin voted to confirm misogynist Twitter troll Richard Grenell as ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump. He now claims he can’t vote for Tanden because of her “mean tweets.” A mean Tanden tweet involved things like calling Sen. Susan Collins “the worst” or saying that vampires have “more heart” than Flyin’ Ted Cruz. [The truth hurts.] A Grenell tweet involved comparing Rachel Maddow’s appearance to Justin Bieber and telling her to “take a breath and put on a necklace,” or describing Michelle Obama “sweating on the East Room carpet.”
It’s not just Manchin, of course. One single Republican could step up and Tanden would be confirmed, but the same Republicans who spent four years pretending not to have read Trump’s tweets and voted to confirm Sessions and Grenell and Kavanaugh are suddenly upset about Tanden’s tweets. In fact, Sen. Mitt Romney, who is very troubled about Tanden’s tweets, had Grenell as a top aide on his 2012 campaign.
The Washington Post editorializes today, Now Republicans are offended by mean tweets?
Yes, Ms. Tanden has been undiplomatic. But the case against her confirmation is weak — especially when you compare her with many of the people Republican senators have endorsed in the past.
Republican opposition to Ms. Tanden because of her sometimes-tough tweeting reflects some mind-boggling hypocrisy. Republicans spent four years playing down and forgiving President Donald Trump’s disgusting tweets. Not a single Republican voted against confirming Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany [later elevated to a much-higher post for a brief time as the acting director of national intelligence], despite his history of Twitter trolling — including nasty comments about the appearances of female journalists and world leaders — which was far worse than Ms. Tanden’s tweets. Mr. Manchin voted to confirm Mr. Grenell, too.
Ms. Tanden is tapped to lead Mr. Biden’s budget office, where it is important for the president to have an appointee who reflects his views. Is it unacceptable for the OMB director to be strongly partisan? Republicans didn’t think so when they jammed through Mick Mulvaney, a co-founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, to be Mr. Trump’s first OMB chair, despite Mr. Mulvaney’s destructive opposition to raising the national debt limit and avoiding government shutdowns during Barack Obama’s presidency. When Mr. Mulvaney became Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Republicans approved conservative ideologue Russell Vought to direct the Trump administration’s budget office. Ms. Tanden, by contrast, has deployed her sharp elbows to battle the Democrats’ left wing as well as Republicans on her right.
It is not fair to hold Mr. Biden’s nominees to a far higher standard because the president has called for unity while his predecessor denigrated it. Ms. Tanden should have been more civil in the past, like many people in Washington. But the Senate should approve presidents’ picks to staff their administrations unless those picks are grossly unqualified. Ms. Tanden’s long service in Washington, as a top player in Democratic politics and policy and as the head of a major think tank, makes her more qualified than was either Mr. Mulvaney or Mr. Vought.
No one is accusing Deb Haaland of mean tweets. Rather, Republican Sens. John Barrasso and Steve Daines have vowed to hold up her confirmation over her “radical” views like wanting to slow global climate change—she’s said one of her policy goals is to “keep fossil fuels in the ground.” Barrasso and Daines are very upset about that, but of course their insistence on painting Haaland as radical isn’t simply about policy. As former Sens. Mark Udall and Tom Udall wrote in a USA Today op-ed, “Were either of us the nominee to lead the Interior Department, we doubt that anyone would be threatening to hold up the nomination or wage a scorched earth campaign warning about ‘radical’ ideas.”
The Udalls are, of course, white men.
“Rep. Haaland’s nomination is both historic and long overdue,” they continued. “If confirmed, she would be the first Native American Cabinet member. Her record is in line with mainstream conservation priorities. Thus, the exceptional criticism of Rep. Haaland and the threatened holds on her nomination must be motivated by something other than her record.”
Republicans can drag Haaland’s confirmation process out, throwing up roadblocks and additional procedural votes, though ultimately, if every Democrat supports her, they can’t stop it entirely. (That, of course, is where Manchin comes in.)
There’s a pattern here even beyond Haaland and Tanden. Of President Biden’s nominees to be confirmed to date, the closest vote was for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino and first immigrant in that role. Republicans are also threatening to hold up the nomination of Health and Human Services (HHS) nominee Xavier Becerra, the current California attorney general and a former House member. Becerra would be the first Latino to lead HHS. Republicans, after confirming non-doctor Alex Azar to be HHS secretary under Trump, say that not being a doctor means Becerra isn’t qualified.
The list goes on. Outside right-wing groups are launching attacks on Vanita Gupta’s nomination for associate attorney general. Democrats are concerned that Kristen Clarke, nominated to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, will face opposition. Gupta is Indian American. Clarke is Black.
”It’s been incredibly disturbing to see a pattern or a trend emerging where people of color and women seem to be at the bottom of the list in terms of hearings and getting their confirmations finalized,” Janet Murguía of UnidosUS told Politico. “It’s highly offensive to see this foot-dragging going on when we have such an incredible need to put these different leaders in place in these different agencies.”
And it has to be recognized for what it is. Republicans and Manchin alike can claim that race and gender play no role in who they find themselves comfortable with or concerned about, or in who they feel safe opposing. But their actions will tell the tale.
Well said.
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The Washington Post reports “Many of Biden’s nominees of color run into turbulence in the Senate”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/many-of-bidens-nominees-of-color-run-into-turbulence-in-the-senate/2021/02/24/1af0832c-76b4-11eb-948d-19472e683521_story.html
“Turbulence” is when you hit a patch of rough air while flying. Just call it what it is: racism and sexism.
Jennifer Rubin writes, “Republicans’ appalling confirmation record is symptomatic of their entire approach to politics”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/24/republicans-appalling-confirmation-record-is-symptomatic-their-entire-approach-politics/
The galling double standard that Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) apply to nominees — they approved of Richard Grenell, whose misogynistic tweets and hyperpartisanship were not barriers for his ambassadorship, but object to Neera Tanden’s partisan criticism of Republican hypocrisy — should not obscure an even bigger problem with Republicans’ selective outrage.
Republicans (and Manchin for that matter) routinely confirmed utterly unqualified, partisan and unfit nominees under the previous administration because these were the president’s choices. Consider former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who had zero public-sector experience and delivered one of the worst confirmation hearing performances in memory. All 52 Republicans voted for him, as did Manchin. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who inexplicably dubbed Tanden as inexperienced, voted to confirm him as well.
Or consider Mike Pompeo, who as a congressman conducted a partisan fishing expedition into Hillary Clinton’s actions based on false information. Nominated for CIA director — a position for which nonpartisanship is essential — every Republican but Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) voted to confirm him, as did Manchin. Try to find a theory by which Pompeo is considered temperamentally suited to be CIA chief and a long-time policy wonk such as Tanden should be excluded from OMB. You won’t find one — other than mean-spirited partisanship.
Take a rhetorical bomb thrower and right-wing radical such as Mick Mulvaney, also nominated for director of Office of Management and Budget. He gleefully championed the 2013 federal government shutdown (“good policy” he called it). Other than the late John McCain, not a single Republican (Collins included) opposed him. He was sufficiently bipartisan, but Tanden is not? Are we supposed to believe that senators who ignored a president who was banned from Twitter for four years was “offended” by Tanden or “concerned” about partisanship? Please.
Twenty Republicans opposed the confirmation of Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the United Nations, despite her being an African American woman with decades of experience in the Foreign Service. Not experienced enough? These were the Republicans that rubber-stamped, for example, John Ratcliffe, the prior president’s intemperate, unqualified pick for director of national intelligence.
It is long past time that we stop giving credence to Republicans (and Manchin, who seeks to camouflage himself in their midst) for their concocted rationales for indefensible, hyperpartisan conduct. The nub of the problem is not Tanden’s tweets or partisanship; it is the persistent Republican belief that a Democratic president is not entitled to the same deference the GOP extended to the disgraced, incompetent president even as he nominated cronies and ethically challenged and unqualified nominees beset by conflicts of interest.
Their attitude toward nominations is symptomatic of their entire approach to politics: It is about theater, about feeding right-wing media (which loves nothing better than to paint progressives as extreme radicals) and never about governance, let alone bipartisanship.
The American people elected Joe Biden president, not Joe Manchin – he could not get elected anywhere in this country other than West Virginia. This prima donna does not get to pick Joe Biden’s cabinet. He should stay in his lane.
Greg Sargent of the Washington Post explains, “The opposition to confirming Neera Tanden is based on a lie”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/23/opposition-neera-tanden-confirmation/
There are numerous reasons to mock the opposition to confirming Neera Tanden as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is supposedly rooted in anger over her harsh tweets about Republicans. It’s hypocritical. It has little to do with her qualifications. And there’s nothing wrong with appointing a partisan to begin with.
But perhaps the biggest flaw in the argument against Tanden is this one: It’s based on a lie.
That lie is the idea that the prospects for bipartisan comity in the Senate, and for good relations between Republicans and the Biden administration, rest in some sense on Tanden’s fate. They simply do not.
As a terrific Post editorial points out, it’s absurd for Republicans to bellyache about partisan nastiness after four years of Trump. And it’s inconsistent for Manchin to do the same after voting for Trump nominees with their own histories of partisanship and aggressive social media combat.
And as the Post editorial notes, even if Tanden has been undiplomatic, it would be crazy to deny Biden his pick based solely on the fact that he has promised unity even as Trump deliberately promoted the opposite.
Still more fundamentally, the basic idea that bipartisan comity depends on what happens with Tanden is ridiculous.
Confirming Tanden would not in and of itself seriously aggravate partisan divisions. Sinking her nomination would not in and of itself seriously facilitate bipartisan comity.
In reality, the prospects for bipartisan cooperation depend, from the GOP side, largely on how much political pressure moderate Republicans feel to support aspects of Biden’s agenda. And from the Democratic side, those prospects depend on how much of their agenda Biden and Democrats are willing to trade away to achieve bipartisanship for its own sake.
Republicans are not going to suddenly be more open or inclined toward supporting that agenda if Tanden goes down. Similarly, they will not be substantially less open to supporting it if Tanden is confirmed. That’s not how the incentives work.
Republicans are incentivized to maintain as unified an opposition to Biden’s agenda as they can, because to whatever degree they can deny him bipartisan cooperation, they can cast him as a failed conciliator.
Republicans are incentivized to deny Biden bipartisan cooperation. There is no planet on which torpedoing Tanden would somehow reduce this incentive over the long term, even if Biden shouted his intention to offer her up as a human sacrifice to the Gods of Civility and Bipartisanship from atop the Capitol dome.
Nor will any decision by Biden and Democrats to water down their agenda to win bipartisan cooperation be in any way influenced by what happens here. You can see Biden and Democrats exercising bipartisan civility by, say, soliciting GOP input on various bills. But the question of whether that will result in actual bipartisan cooperation won’t be even slightly influenced by Tanden’s fate.
The idea seems to be that sacrificing Tanden now might demonstrate good will from Democrats toward Republicans, and that this will somehow bank good will among Republicans toward them. But the incentives just don’t work this way. And every senator making this argument against Tanden — along with every journalist covering this debate — knows it.
Emily Peck at Huffington Post writes, “Joe Biden’s Nominees Of Color Are Facing Outsize Opposition”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-nominees-of-color-opposition_n_60353daac5b66dfc1021deff
“Several other Biden nominees of color are facing questions and potential complications.
“If it was just Tanden, I’d say her circumstances are sufficiently unusual that we might not want to generalize. But it’s not just her,” said Jennifer Lawless, a political science professor at the University of Virginia and an expert in gender and politics. “If you’ve got a handful of nominees who are either women or people of color systematically experiencing more hurdles and doubt than white men going through the confirmation process, that raises a flag.”
“That’s sexism and racism,” she added.”