From confidence to a distraction: Inside Biden's failed push for Neera Tanden
Washington (CNN)Standing onstage in December at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, Joe Biden described his freshly nominated pick to run the White House budget office, Neera Tanden, as "brilliant." He cited her hardscrabble upbringing. And he even quoted his father to emphasize her set of values.
"Don't
tell me what you value. Show me your budget. I'll tell you what you
value," he said. "That's what you're going to do for us, Neera."
The
President-elect seemed confident, as did Tanden when she spoke a few
minutes later, that she would soon be ensconced in the Office of
Management and Budget suite next door to the West Wing.
But
behind the scenes -- on Capitol Hill, in Democratic circles and even
among some of Biden's allies -- few shared the bullish outlook. Tanden's
history of sharp-edged tweets about Republicans and Democrats alike made her a polarizing figure. And at the time, it wasn't even clear Democrats would control the Senate.
Three months later, Tanden's nomination has cratered.
The
slow collapse, drawn out over weeks, came to a conclusion late Tuesday,
when the White House announced Tanden had withdrawn her nomination to
avoid further distraction. In his own statement, Biden said he would
still award her a position in his administration, albeit one that
doesn't require Senate confirmation.
The
person viewed as a leading contender to be nominated in Tanden's place
-- Shalanda Young, Biden's pick to be deputy OMB director -- had
breezed through a confirmation hearing on Tuesday, earning praise even
from conservative Republicans.
A lesson for the Biden White House
The selection of Tanden, a close friend of White House chief of staff Ron Klain,
may offer an instructive, forward-looking lesson for the seasoned Biden
administration: Despite decades of political experience in Washington,
they are now operating under razor-thin Democratic majorities in
Congress in a capital still very much unsettled by the Trump era.
Tanden's
downfall amounts to the first real stumble for the new team, which has
still seen the bulk of Biden's Cabinet selections approved by wide
bipartisan majorities. All recent presidents have had one or more of
their nominees fail. It took President Barack Obama, for example, three
attempts to find a commerce secretary and two tries to get a health and
human services secretary confirmed. By the time he departed office,
President Donald Trump had all but given up on making high-profile
nominations at all, preferring to name acting secretaries instead.
Since
the moment of her nomination on December 1, Tanden worked to allay the
skepticism about her selection -- from Democrats and Republicans alike.
For much of the last three months, she met with 46 different senators,
officials said, offering apologies and explanations for her salty, and
often offensive, tweets that she blasted out during Trump's tenure. The
fact that the downfall of Tanden's nomination was her Twitter account is
an ironic turn of events given the vitriol that often spewed from the
former President on the same platform before he was suspended earlier
this year.
"I
deeply regret and apologize for my language and some of my past
language," Tanden said at her confirmation hearing last month, a
recognition that she still had work to do to win the hearts and minds of
the senators who would determine her fate.
In
the end, it wasn't enough. Even more, an administration official told
CNN, the political capital being spent trying to salvage her
confirmation is needed on trying to thread the complicated needle among
Democrats to pass the Covid-19 relief bill in the Senate.
The
episode underscores the governing constraints facing Biden despite
enjoying Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. And it
illustrates what some Biden allies describe as overconfidence by the
President and his chief of staff -- who was instrumental in pushing for
Tanden's selection — in managing a delicate political reality on Capitol
Hill.
Tanden's
nomination was effectively scuttled by a single centrist Democrat: Sen.
Joe Manchin of West Virginia, whose statement of opposition last month
on a Friday afternoon sent the White House scrambling and provided an
early warning of how a single vote can thwart Biden's legislative
agenda. Manchin cited Tanden's "overtly partisan statements," which he
said would create toxicity between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Spending political capital
Manchin's
skepticism opened the door to more, but the White House insisted it
wasn't over for Tanden yet. And at Klain's urging, the administration
continued pushing for her to be confirmed, even as it became ever
clearer she would not gain enough support.
Officials
sought to highlight backing from moderate Republicans outside of
Congress, including former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. And they
repeatedly pointed to her historic credentials -- she would have been
the first woman of South Asian descent to run OMB -- as evidence of her
worthiness for confirmation.
One official said the White House wanted to demonstrate it would fight for its nominees,
even though many inside the building acknowledged Tanden's nomination
was likely doomed. The official said it would have looked weak had Biden
caved, particularly because the main criticism of Tanden -- that her
tweets were cruel -- could be viewed as sexist.
"Let
me be clear: We're going to get Neera Tanden confirmed. That's what
we're working for," Klain said during an appearance on MSNBC last week.
He
was not alone in his desire to keep pushing; Biden himself was on
board, as were other senior advisers, according to people familiar with
the matter.
"We're
going to push," Biden said last month, even as it became clear the door
to confirmation was closing. "We still think there's a shot, a good
shot."
Still,
inside the administration, Klain was viewed as Tanden's strongest
advocate and the most ardent voice in pushing to continue her
nomination.
"Ron
is not a dispassionate observer here," a senior Democrat who has
previously worked with Klain told CNN last week, ahead of Tanden's
withdrawal, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the
White House. "He selected Neera and doesn't want this to fail."
Yet
the troubling signs continued. Multiple aides told CNN that Biden's
team was leaning so confidently into the idea of their party falling in
line on nominations that minimal outreach was conducted to convince moderate Republicans to vote for Tanden.
On
Wednesday last week, the two committees that had been scheduled to hold
votes on Tanden's nomination abruptly delayed them. But it was not
Republicans causing the holdup; Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat
from Arizona, refused to say how she would vote, and the committee did
not want to risk moving forward without knowing the outcome.
The nomination appeared finally dead after Sen. Lisa Murkowski,
a moderate Republican from Alaska, signaled to the White House that --
despite a one-on-one meeting where issues related to her state had been
discussed in detail -- she would not support Tanden's nomination.
Speaking in the moments after Tanden's withdrawal was announced, Murkowski did not seem surprised.
"It
was kind of going that direction," she said, going on to describe how
she had shown Tanden maps of Alaska's tribal lands during their highly
anticipated meeting.
In trouble from the start
It wasn't how Biden, Tanden or Klain had envisioned things going three months ago.
When
Tanden was selected, the Biden transition team had believed Republicans
would control the Senate, which made her nomination even more
confounding. But at the time, Biden and his aides leaned heavily into
her background, including how she had been raised by a single mother who
came to the United States from India.
"I'm
here today because of social programs," Tanden said on the day of her
nomination, standing onstage near Biden in Wilmington. "Because of
budgetary choices. Because of a government that saw my mother's dignity,
and gave her a chance."
Yet
one of the biggest roadblocks to confirmation came after the Georgia
runoff races effectively handed control of the Senate to Democrats,
which suddenly made Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, the
leader of the Budget Committee.
Tanden
and Sanders had tangled publicly for years, dating back to the 2016
presidential campaign, when she worked as a top adviser to Hillary
Clinton. Sanders blamed Tanden, among other establishment Democrats, for
his loss in the primary race.
Until the final moments on Tuesday, Sanders had not embraced her as Biden's nominee to lead OMB.
"Neera
Tanden does not have the votes, so we'll have to see what happens in
the future," Sanders told CNN's Wolf Blitzer shortly before the White
House pulled her nomination.
When pressed for his position, Sanders replied, "I'll make that decision when the vote takes place."
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