As you can see from the “Noteworthy” box at the top of our web page, TDS is cosponsoring a major post-election analysis event at the National Press Club this Friday, in conjunction with the Progressive Policy Institute. It will feature TDS Co-Editors Bill Galston and Ruy Teixeira, PPI president Will Marshall, and to provide a Republican perspective, Ross Douthat of The Atlantic. I’ll be there, too, but will let the above worthies do the talking.
The title, “Rove or Roosevelt? Prospects for a Political Realignment” suggests a look back at the election results and a look forward at how the Obama administration and Democrats generally might decide to create or solidify a realignment. The reference to Karl Rove hints at an approach that some, particularly those convinced that the November 4 victory was fragile or even ephermeral, may urge on Obama: using the levers of power to reward elements of the Democratic base while appealing very selectively to swing voter categories that might push up Democratic percentages in the future to a more comfortable margin, even without the anti-Republican atmosphere of this election year. The reference to FDR, of course, suggests a more systemic approach of governing in order to create a broad attachment to the Democratic Party among Americans grateful for genuine leadership in a time of crisis.
It should be quite a discussion. Please drop by if you are in the DC area on Friday, and we’ll try to quickly get transcripts and make some of the analysis available here next week.
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’sbeen 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.
