Tag: Neera Tanden

The Story: The President's choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, has withdrawn herself from consideration. It had become clear that...

Yet among the flaws on Bernie’s resume for many progressives is an unalterable one — he is a white male, and an old one without a cute Spanish nickname. The straight, cisgendered Sanders is burdened by his utter lack of intersectionality, unless being a Vermont senator from Brooklyn counts. Sanders cited the famous Martin Luther King Jr. quote about judging people by the content of their character and replied: “We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age. Neera Tanden, of the Center for American Progress, thundered, “At a time where folks feel under attack because of who they are, saying race or gender or sexual orientation or identity doesn’t matter is not off, it’s simply wrong.” Former Hillary Clinton aide Jess McIntosh added, “This is usually an argument made by people who don’t enjoy outsized respect and credibility because of their race, gender, age and sexual orientation.” Stephen Colbert snarked, “Yes, like Dr. King, I have a dream — a dream where this diverse nation can come together and be led by an old white guy.” But what Sanders is getting at here should be completely uncontroversial. Of course it is important that we look beyond the demographic characteristics of candidates, to their views and their merits. Do we want to live in a society where no one can represent people different from them? By this logic, given a choice between South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Bernie Sanders for president, progressives would want all African-Americans to vote for the black Republican (of course, in that scenario, many progressives would pronounce Scott “not really black”). Bobby Kennedy, lionized for his unifying campaigning, would be retroactively deemed just another straight white male. Anyone who looks at, say, Steve Forbes and Bernie Sanders and thinks, “Oh, just a couple of white guys” is disregarding every political and philosophical difference in favor of a racialist reductionism. Today, though, Bernie is not race- and sex-obsessed enough for the identity-politics hall monitors of the Democratic Party.

I really don’t think we are,” said Cusack, 75, a former Democratic National Committee member from Florida. “I’d go back to this last election — who won?” said McGuire, who, as a superdelegate like Cusack, supported Clinton at the 2016 convention. Some women see bias in the excitement surrounding a potential presidential run by Beto O’Rourke, the Texan who energized the left in a losing Senate bid, while Stacey Abrams is not mentioned as a possibility even though she had a much narrower loss for governor of Georgia. For the first time, multiple women may be serious contenders: Warren is in, and Sens. A female front-runner would become a norm if a woman wins the nomination four years after Clinton did. Women’s political mobilization — as volunteers, candidates and donors — fueled the Democratic Party’s gains in the November elections, and Democrats still far outpace Republicans in elevating women to party leadership and representation in Congress. Regardless of whether a woman wins the nomination, the presence of new, multiple female faces in the race could help the party move past a set of political expectations for women largely defined by Clinton for decades. “I do believe they’re held to a different standard,” she said, adding: “But could a woman win? Those campaigns, and the prospect of multiple female candidates, may change how women are treated in the presidential race. “It is more likely than not that you will have women running for president in both parties,” said Kathy Sullivan, a longtime Democratic National Committee member and former state party chairwoman in New Hampshire.

Just a few days into 2019, some Democrats and media critics are seeing ghosts of the type of 2016 campaign coverage they say sunk Hillary Clinton. In the case of both candidates, their policies were by far overshadowed by coverage about the “horse race” and their “alleged scandals.” Follow-up research concurred that the coverage disproportionately focused on Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, even compared to Trump’s numerous controversies. Another analysis last year found that in “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many [front-page] stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” In the first few days of Warren’s own presidential candidacy, some observers see a few familiar tendencies, with coverage centering around her handling of past Native American heritage claims and so-called “likability.” “The media should reflect on what it got wrong last time: principally, its tendency to skew the balance between perceived scandal and substantive policy talk,” wrote the Columbia Journalism Review. “There’s something very (Hillary) Clinton-esque about the Warren DNA test story and the way the press is handling it,” FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver tweeted last month in response to a New York Times story about the political implications of the test, which Warren released in October, and that asserted that the “lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened.” Silver said that while Warren “showed poor judgement,” the press was treating a “minor story” like a “major crisis.” There's something very (Hillary) Clinton-esque about the Warren DNA test story and the way the press is handling it. — Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) December 6, 2018 Like Clinton’s email controversy, Warren’s DNA test quickly became a plum target for conservative media. Another more recent, dovetailing strain of media criticism has been of the coverage drawing comparisons to Clinton’s “likability.” In a press conference Monday outside her Cambridge home, the first two questions the Massachusetts senator faced were about whether she was electable enough or too “polarizing.” Warren declined to engage with the premise. The article that perhaps stirred the most controversy — a Politico story Monday titled “Warren battles the ghosts of Hillary” — posited that Warren “shares too many of the attributes that sank Hillary Clinton” and had to battle perceptions of being too “cold or unlikable” — despite not directly quoting anyone making that argument. pic.twitter.com/DnVIw2RSgG — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 2, 2019 In fairness, Warren does appear to face some challenges in what is expected to be a crowded Democratic primary field. Recent polling has showed even voters in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts didn’t want her to run. “And trust me, there will be an awful lot of noise in the next 22 months.”

Donald Trump reached his highest disapproval number yet and nearly half of Americans want him impeached, but there is a number that is "stunning” says Michael Tomasky, Neera Tanden and Jonathan Alter join Ali Velshi to talk Trump's rising unpopularity.…

President Trump's top intelligence advisors warned that the threat of Russian interference in US elections is real and ongoing. Trump hasn't joined them-- calling the investigation a "hoax" hours after his advisors' spoke at the WH press briefing. Neera Tanden…

Ron Klain says the Senate Judiciary Committee must ask Brett Kavanaugh if he gave the Trump White House any “assurances” about the Mueller investigation. Cecile Richards and Neera Tanden discuss what the nominee would mean to Roe v. Wade. »…

Politico reports that Republican senators are getting frustrated with Trump's tariffs, arguing that Trump doesn't understand how his tariffs are hurting the U.S. economy. Lawrence discusses the fallout with Jared Bernstein, Neera Tanden, and John Harwood. » Subscribe to MSNBC:…

24 hours before Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, Sen. Jeff Flake said that he would block Trump judicial nominations over tariffs. Lawrence says that if Flake holds strong, he could take down a radical Trump nominee…

Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday he agrees with Trey Gowdy on the FBI probe of the Trump campaign but wavered after getting pressure from Trump supporters. Complicating matters, a new poll shows voters will elect candidates who are a check…