Hillary Loyalist & DNC Apparatchik: What's Behind GOP & Progressives' Distaste for Neera Tanden?

Some Republicans have already signalled they are willing to block Tanden's nomination in the Senate, should the GOP win both Georgia runoffs and maintain control over the upper chamber in January 2021, because of her disparaging comments about the party. The Daily Beast broke on 30 November that she had apparently wiped over 1,000 tweets, many of which were critical of Republican senators whose support she might need next month.

Progressives also bear a grudge against Tanden, a longtime Hillary Clinton loyalist who was dubbed "the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the US", by former Sanders campaign aide David Sirota. The New York Post remarks that even if the Dems take the two Georgia seats, thus creating an evenly split Senate, Tanden's feud with Bernie may complicate her nomination. She cannot afford to lose a single vote on the Democratic side, otherwise potential Vice President Kamala Harris would be unable to tip the balance in her favour.

Biden's Strange Political Decision

"Biden's choice of Neera Tanden represents something of a strange decision politically", says Dr Rubrick Biegon, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Kent, the UK. "Unlike other nominees to Biden's cabinet, Tanden will face opposition from both the right and the left".

The former vice president's decision signals that he is likely to take a relatively "moderate" approach to the country's economic policy, suggests the academic, explaining that Tanden is seen as representing the centrist wing of the Democratic Party on budgetary matters.

This circumstance may add fuel to the fire on the progressive flank of the party who are seeking more radical economic reforms, while seeing Tanden as "a union-buster, a threat to Social Security, a hippie-puncher who constantly picks fights with the left", according to Politico. In addition to this, she is also known as an ardent opponent of Medicare For All.

​Bernie's aide David Sirota did not rule out that the Dems intentionally tapped her to poke Sanders, the Senate Budget Committee chair.

​"Tanden has been a visible critic of Bernie Sanders going back to the 2016 election cycle", Biegon says. "On economic matters, she has espoused policies that many activists on the left oppose, including the possibility of cuts to Social Security and other 'entitlements' programmes. This will strengthen their opposition to her nomination as head of the Office of Management and Budget".

However, the Democratic establishment does share the progressives' concerns, according to the academic.

Tanden: Yet Another Radical Neocon

What is more concerning about Tanden is she is yet another "radical neocon" that Joe Biden relies upon, notes Bill Ravotti, a political analyst and former GOP nominee for the US Congress.

While the Obama administration was participating in the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, Tanden went even so far as to suggest "in internal CAP discussions that the US steal Libya's oil as a way of reducing the US deficit", according to Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist, author, and former attorney. The bombshell story was published by Greenwald in November 2015 after her former employees leaked her incriminating emails to him.

Tanden, who was a top aide to Hillary Clinton in 2008 and advised her primary and presidential campaigns in 2016, physically attacked a journalist who dared to ask the then-presidential candidate a question about the Iraq War, according to The Observer.

She was also known as a proponent of the already debunked hoax about the Trump-Russia "collusion". However, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's two-year, $32 million investigation failed to find any evidence to back the story.

​Bill Ravotti laments the fact that Biden has gathered a whole team of former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama loyalists and "discredited neocons" which apparently represents a shift "back to the dark days of US foreign policy". This is even more troubling than Tanden's pick, he concludes.