We political bloggers sometimes fall prey to our own obsessions, and I’m sure some of us are gripped by the delusion that the whole hep world is breathlessly tuned into the Social Security debate, the bankruptcy bill, or the various machinations of Karl and Grover and HoHo, or the jesuitical DLC. But let’s get real: none of this stuff is more than a tinny little sound compared to America’s real preoccuption these days: the trial of You-Know-Who.Now I’m sure that traffic-savvy bloggers like Wonkette (or the Substitute Wonkette, or the Wonkette-Mini-Me, or whoever the hell is womanning that sex-and-booze-soaked Font of Hilarity these days) will constantly find ways to use interest in the West Coast Offense to draw readers to the latest batch of Washington Gossip. But I’m going to be a Real Democrat and stand up for my values here, and declare NewDonkey an official Jacko-Free site. I don’t care if political news gets so slow that I’m writing about GAO reports on traffic-light synchronization; I just won’t go to Santa Maria.Although it violates the religio-ethical principal of Avoiding the Near Occasion of Sin, I am not swearing off references to anyone named “Jackson.” Jesse, Scoop, Andy–these are all legitimate Jacksonian topics. But no Moonwalking, I swear.In taking this hard line against Jackocentrism, I expect at least a few emails accusing me of blogo-snobbery. That’s not fair. I’m one of the few political bloggers who regularly uses “ain’t” and “sho nuff” and other crackerisms. Unlike David Sirota, I learned my populism at my grand-daddy’s knee back in the day, not by working on some 2004 campaign. And with March Madness on the horizon, I’ll certainly be watching a lot of cheesy beer-and-junk-food commercials and heading for the kitchen with Pavlovian regularity.But you have to draw a line somewhere, and as Martin Luther famously said: “Here I stand; no other can I do.”
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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February 26: Tanden Confirmation Fight Not an Existential Threat for Biden Administration
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’s been all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.