Biden Cabinet Confirmation Live Thread ***hearings, votes, etc.***

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I could see Tanden run into issues from the right(democrats) and maybe Vilsack and Raimondo run into issues from the left( Sanders, Warren, Merkley maybe).

Tanden is infinitely more likely to run into issue with progressives than with moderates, given her prior conduct.

Luckily for her, we're talking about the Senate and not progressives.

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Wait, so this is the cabinet that Republicans are claiming has too many black people in it?? Give me a break.

Well, 4/24 is a lot for Republicans

We've had 8 years of black Secretary of States and also HUD out of the 12 years of Republican Presidents this century.

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Hopefully the House sends the impeachment over to the Senate soon so that this dumpster fire of a cabinet can be held up.

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Who will have the most trouble getting confirmed? Tanden?

Tanden (and maybe also Raimondo) is probably going to have the most trouble.

I could see it being the case where Republicans are unilaterally opposed to Tanden and Manchin/Sinema/Tester potentially also being opposed to her. It might end up being a 50/50 split with Kamala needing to tiebreak. Kamala obviously wouldn't vote against Tanden's nomination.

I kinda want Bernie to sink her nomination as a revenge, but he's too nice and has far too much class to do that.

Sanders will likely have one of the most pro Biden voting records in the Senate so I doubt that

He's too nice for his own good.

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Bernie also isn't terminally online so I doubt he's even aware Neera has Twitter drama lol. He probably just knows her as a progressive from a think tank.

This is not true. The clash (and, let's not mince words, the extent of Tanden's anti-Bernie hackery) runs deeper than mere Twitter feuds.

This is part of what I find upsetting about her renewed prominence. There's a lot of awful behavior on Twitter  coming from people in proximity to real power, but unless they're Donald Trump or Elon Musk this passes largely unnoticed. It's not really news, but it's public enough that anyone with some knowledge of the relevant online social circles can follow the drama.

I understand the temptation of dismissing it as irrelevant, as Ferguson suggests, but we are a decade past the last year in which it made any sense to dismiss online behavior as if it happened in an alternate reality with no relevance to who we are in the material world. We're not talking about some wacky online persona, or a gruff personality that can't be bothered with trivial niceties: Tanden's outbursts and bullying deserve to be treated as a mark of character.

You're right about the political considerations, though, especially as the feud with Tanden is not just an intraparty one but to some extent intrafactional. I'm sure that some readers will want to argue the point, but she is one of Biden's leftier appointees and it's not likely that any Berniecrat would prefer Biden's second choice for OMB in policy terms.

Still... I can't get past the character issue, and the longer I follow politics the more importance I grant it. It's often not an easy quality to rate, but there are actions and patterns of behavior that betray when someone isn't worth trusting. (I'm certainly not perfect in my online behavior, but if we're ever to get ourselves out of our present mire, it will require that we learn how to treat each other decently over this medium.)

When one of the leftier nominees is an UAE operative who said that Libya needs to pay us back for our war there, we have a real problem.

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It's laughable Garland is still confirmed or close to. He's one of the most important cabinet members, so they need to speed up now.

It's only a week now until he goes before the Judiciary committee, rather than 5 years the last time he was nominated.

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Bloomberg is reporting that Rahm Emanuel is high on the list to be appointed as U.S. Ambassador to China by Biden.

I might have to start taking the "Sleepy Joe" conspiracies more seriously if this reporting is true.

But no, for real, Biden is smarter than that (I think/hope). Or hopefully, just like earlier Rahm rumors - this one isn't true.

If he treats the Chinese like he treated progressives, we're looking at all out nuclear war here.

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I dunno Rahm's personality doesn't seem like a great fit for Japan, culturally?

His personality is bad for any country we want to be diplomatic with.

Send him to Liechtenstein or something.

That is shared with Switzerland. It might take some work to figure out who is ambassador to the fewest people after the Vatican and the 3 free association countries.

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Pretty interesting development here:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1374437476845060104?s=20

Neoliberal identity politics, folks.