Looks like Biden’s nominee for OMB Director, Neera Tanden, may be going down. Joe Manchin says he’s opposed, and finding even one Republican who will cross the aisle to vote for her will be a challenge. The knock on her is that she’s said mean things on Twitter about some Senators, which is a pretty petty reason to oppose her. But Senators are notoriously petty individuals, so be careful what you Tweet, kids, if you see any sort of Senate-confirmed position in your future.
If she goes down, some of the progressives will be cheering. I don’t know the details of the feud, but I’ve been seeing ugly headlines about her for a long time from the progressives. It’s not about mean tweets. It’s about her selling out to corporate interests.
Krystal Ball: NO ONE Should Vote For Neera Tanden, Hillary’s Corrupt Hatchet Woman
Manchin voted to confirm Bill Barr, and several other awful Trump nominees, IIRC. If he’s going to be this petty and dumb for a Biden nominee, I hope they have a vote and make him do it formally.
Krystal Ball is a media troll who continuously accused Elizabeth Warren of being a stealth conservative and taking money from corporate interests under the table. She has about as much credibility as your average Trump Administration Press Secretary, which is to say exactly none. Except for Sean Spicer; I mean, you couldn’t believe what he was saying but boy he looked sharp in that off-the-rack Men’s Warehouse suit that was three sizes to big for him.
Joe Manchin has a right to his own views, of course, but if he’s just going to continuously play the card of “I’m a conservative Democrat” by blocking every Democratic initiative and playing into the hands of the GOP, he might as well just switch parties. Manchin hasn’t done the least of any senator, but when his highlights include such gems as the “Online See Something, Say Something Act of 2021” you get the impression he’s shooting for a participation medal rather than meaningful legislation.
Stranger
I do like how that description talks about “international terrorism” when it’s the domestic kind that’s been the bigger issue recently.
No, no, no, no, no.
If he switched parties, that would make McConnell majority leader again.
OK, sounds like you’re not a fan of progressives. But you can substitute her name for any of the progressive like Kyle Kulinski, The Young Turks, Rational National, Jimmy Dore and a host of others. They all have the same message. Probably won’t change your opinion, but it’s not about Krystal Ball.
A look at Manchin’s voting record shows that he’s been about 50-50 in supporting or opposing Trump nominees and initiatives over the last four years. He voted to remove Trump from office – four times. He voted against the objection to electors. He voted for Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, but against Amy Coney Barrett. Interestingly, he also voted against Trump’s last nominee for OMB, Russell Vought.
I don’t think Manchin is a secret Republican and he certainly isn’t “blocking every Democratic initiative” – he’s voted for every Biden nominee until Tanden. He is what he says he is, a centrist Democrat who’s going to break from the party some of the time. Politically, he couldn’t survive in West Virginia otherwise. And if those breaks give him cover to vote with the party when it counts – such as making Chuck Schumer rather than Mitch McConnell majority leader – then the sacrificing the occasional low-profile nominee is worth it.
Okay, Joe has been President for one month. And he hasn’t fixed everything yet?? 
Damn! So much for election promises!! 
/sarcasm
Seconded.
And see:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/biden-approval-poll-of-the-week/index.html
It’s the legislative equivalent of the “Chewbacca Defense”.
No, I’m fine with progressives as a representative fraction of the legislature. I applaud their desire to see that people are not just used as resources for large corporate interests and to assure a fair and egalitarian playing field, although I do think many of them need to educate themselves on fiscal theory and social psychology. My specific problem with Krystal Ball is that she is a transparent shill for Bernie Sanders to the point of attacking other progressives with innuendo and outright lies, as she did with Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 primary campaign. Anyone who professes the believe that Elizabeth Warren–who investment bank and corporate interests hate more than Sanders because unlike the latter she has actually done things to curtail unregulated speculation and predatory lending instead of just going on screeds about “breaking up the banks”–is actually a secret corporate patsy is either living in an alternative universe or is as much of a lying conspiranoist as Sean Hannity. When your message is “tear everyone down but my preferred icon”, you’re not helping any cause except those you seek to oppose, and when you flagrantly lie in doing so you undercut any credibility you may have.
Joe Manchin is a “centrist Democrat” only in the context of American politics having shifted so far to the political right of the spectrum that Eisenhower would be accused of being a socialist. It is one thing to break from the party over an issue of principle–and perhaps that is genuinely the case here–then that is a defensible ethical stance. But trading away and compromising just for the sake of seeming “even-handed” and facilitating bipartisanship is a choice that has put the Democratic party at large in a weakened, compromised position. The GOP, for all of its deserved vilification, at least understands that their collective unity is what has accorded them the strength to stand for and promote things that are against the interest of the vast majority of voters. Manchin may have to be conservative to be an electable Democrat in West Virginia, and that is a political reality, but I’ve become very tired of hearing about the significance of Joe Manchin in terms of his ability to swing a vote when by other measures he is a mediocre-at-best senator from a state that has traditionally leaned strongly Democratic and seems to have been lost to the GOP due to inattention and inaction.
Stranger
Looks like Tanden is doomed — Romney and Collins have both said they will vote against her. With Manchin opposed, she needs at least one R vote to be confirmed. I guess Murkowski is still a possibility, but I can’t imagine her willing to be the one Republican that helps confirm a Biden nominee, especially after antagonizing the party with her impeachment vote.
Still don’t understand the Keystone Pipeline cancellation.
It appears to be 1) the first step in a more proactive environmental policy supporting renewable energy sources; 2) the first step in the return of greater regulation of the petroleum industry; and 3) some small recompense to the Native American communities who had their lands seized and who were violently assaulted when they protested the land seizures.
Whether you think those things are good or bad is entirely up to you. Personally I thought the way the pipeline plan was implemented was a big “fuck you” to everyone in its path, so I can’t get too upset if the pipeline people get a big “fuck you” right back. But the stories about “thousands of permanent job losses” due to the cancellation are wildly exaggerated - most of the jobs generated were short-term (4-8 months) construction jobs, with only about 35 permanent jobs being created (some of which would have been in Canada).
According to what I’ve seen on Facebook (some local groups, and some in comments on the official White House FB page) Joe Biden has already:
- Lost thousands of jobs due to cancelling the Keystone Pipeline
- Caused everyone’s property tax and electricity bills to go up
- Raised the minimum wage to $15, shuttering thousands of small businesses and raising prices for everything
- Housed illegal immigrants while leaving homeless vets out in the cold
- Raised the price of insulin from $75 to $500
Also, AOC is a disgusting pig, apparently.
Huh. I didn’t know any of those things. Well, if you saw it on FB, it must be true.
I guess she should just keep the ~$5m she’s helped raise for Texas while Ted Cruz jetted off to Cancun.
You should see all of the nasty stuff people are saying about AOC in response to a post about the good stuff she did for Texas. I can’t remember where I saw the post, maybe it was a new channel or something. Seriously, people are losing their minds about how evil she is.
A politician you disagree with on many issues spearheads major fundraising campaign for emergency assistance to victims of catastrophic weather event in a state largely governed by politicians she disagrees with. Do you—
A) Say “Well, I oppose most of her positions but that was a principled action, which reminds me I’d better go donate to an emergency relief fund for those victims myself”?
B) Or complain "What an evil disgusting pig she is!! "?
Joe and First Doggies in the O.O.