How can Democrats and allied media outlets credibly oppose unhinged conspiracy theories and attacks on U.S. election legitimacy while empowering its worst purveyors?
Sure, the bad news is that she's a corporatist, a militarist, a liar, and a bully but the good news is, as The Washington Post fawns, that her "parents immigrated from India" and that she "would be the first woman of color to oversee the agency." In other words, all of the things that actually define who she is as an individual (like her choices and her character) may be bad, but all of the things which she has inherited and over which she has had no control (like where her parents are from) are good. This is where the idpol-neoliberal "non-aggression pact" gets us: Horrible people in power enacting the same horrible policies as before, but at least they have the politically correct skin color and sexual organs.
"media outlets will lose whatever lingering credibility they have"
Legacy media have no credibility left. One thing I've noticed is that people who religiously read the New York Times are completely uninformed about many of the most crucial events of the day.
It's not that their readers have opinions on the events of the day that are merely aligned with the positions of the Times, rather it's that they do not even know about entire areas of the news because the Times has chosen to simply disappear stories that are inconvenient.
These are smart people, who consider themselves well informed, but objectively are not.
"You can’t run around expecting people will take you seriously when you warn of the dangers of toxic, moronic conspiracy theories when you yourself embrace, elevate and promote the most prolific and reckless purveyors of them."
Well THAT is obviously wrong. Witness the NY Times, The Bezos Post, CNN etc and their unhinged promotion of the Russia hoax without ever admitting that they produced reams of lies and misinformation for political reasons. They certainly expect people to still take them seriously and the ridiculous thing is that people still DO!
"If Joe Biden succeeds in empowering someone like Neera Tanden without extreme opposition from supposedly adversarial journalists, not only Democrats but also these media outlets will lose whatever lingering credibility they have to denounce conspiracy theories and to defend the legitimacy of U.S. elections."
I expect a fawning article praising Biden's choice of Tanden over at The Intercept any day now.
Corey Robin had a revealing interaction with Tanden back in 2016. His story about it reveals the true extent of the toxic trash that is Neera Tanden:
<blockquote>A few days ago, I had a strange experience. I got trolled—some might say gaslighted—by the person who many think will be Hillary Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff.
Her name is Neera Tanden. Tanden is the head of the Center for American Progress, the Democratic Party think tank that works closely with the Clintons.
[...]
Electronic Intifada had excerpted some clips from the Committee’s public deliberations about, among other issues, Israel-Palestine. The hearings had originally been broadcast on C-SPAN. I was struck by the force of West’s moral witness, and what I saw as Tanden’s visible impatience, which you can evaluate for yourself at the 4:40 mark on the Electronic Intifada video.
The next day, Tanden responded to me on Twitter.
[...]
Tanden makes three moves here.
First, she claims—twice—that she was simply not there during the Committee’s deliberations on Israel/Palestine. Not for “any” of those deliberations.
Second, she accuses me of lying.
Third, she asks that I correct my statement.
[...]
So let’s recap.
Tanden said she wasn’t there for “any discussion of Israel/Palestine.” That’s not true. She was.
Tanden claimed that I was lying. That’s not true. I wasn’t.
Tanden asked me to correct my tweet. But what was there to correct?
And never once does she say: Sorry. I was wrong. I was there. I apologize for claiming you were lying. Not even one sentence of that.
[...]
Why am I writing about something so stupid and small at 3 in the morning on a Friday night?
Three reasons.
First, notice the amateurishness.
This is the head of a major DC think tank who could well be Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff. What is she doing on a Tuesday morning firing off salvoes at a Brooklyn College professor about a matter of not terribly great importance—and getting it completely wrong?
[...]
…my second point.
Actually, it’s not mine. It’s Astra Taylor’s. Astra is a documentary filmmaker.
When someone commented on Facebook that they couldn’t understand why a powerful player in DC would be so obsessively monitoring her mentions on Twitter, particularly in response to a not terribly important person like me, Astra made a shrewd observation:
[...]
Never underestimate the narcissism—or amateurishness—of America’s ruling classes. While people like Tanden are in meetings with other important people, where God knows what or whose fate gets decided, they’re keeping their eye on their Twitter mentions, making sure no one’s looking at them cross-eyed, making sure they’re someone whom you don’t want to cross.
[...]
Now I can come, at last, to that, my third point.
So Neera Tanden jumped to fame in my little world exactly five weeks ago, when she and blogger Matt Bruenig crossed swords. (You can read all about the substance of that spat in the various links regarding the incident that I’ve scattered throughout this piece.) Within 24 hours, Matt was fired from his position as a blogger at Demos. Since then, we’ve not heard a word from Matt, save one piece he wrote for Jacobin. A prolific blogger and social media presence, whose voice was everywhere, all the time, particularly on Twitter, has gone silent.*
[...]
So I leave you with this question (and it really is a question): If Tanden can act this way in the face of verifiable evidence that’s plain as day, and there for everyone to see, when the stakes are so low, is it completely implausible that she would act in a roughly similar fashion when the evidence is not so publicly available and not so easily accessible and when the stakes are much higher? When she has an even stronger and more self-interested reason for covering her tracks?</blockquote>
Wow! That was quite a hit on Bernie Sanders for his lapdog performance as a Biden backer. Glen must have been saving that up for some time. Don't know if Bernie will roll over as Glenn suggests but Progressive office holders (I.e. The Squad) risk losing many within the movement if they don't start loudly criticizing and denouncing Biden"s appointees, like Tanden.
>>"further fueling the destruction of confidence and faith among Democrats in the legitimacy of the vote totals"
The Democrats, to their credit, used this lesson to take a more pro-active approach to vote totals in 2020. If Ms. Tanden was responsible for teaching them not to rely on the totals produced by feckless voters or Russian hackers, she deserves to be rewarded.
Her proposal to take Libya's oil was copying an earlier statement by Mr. Trump that the United States should have taken Iraq's oil. This demonstrates her ability to build a bipartisan consensus on key foreign policy goals. Ideally, this goal should be announced in advance of the next war, not merely appended as an afterthought, once the opportunity has passed. (In reality, it won't have much effect, since international oil is priced in petrodollars, so for the cost of printing a few dollar bills, the US can take anybody's oil. However, it would help build public confidence in foreign wars, since all the talk about the United States wasting trillions of dollars on useless foreign wars has a depressing effect on morale).
I expect Ms. Tanden's appointment to breeze through the Senate confirmation process, as Mr. Biden can tell the Senators behind the scenes that if they reject her, he will pick Mr. Sanders.
Don't worry about Tanden, and her lack of character. CNN tells us not to worry about anything regarding the Biden presidency. Why? "Joe Biden's broken foot reveals how different his White House will be from Donald Trump's" The article then goes on to say that Trump went to Walter Reed Medical Center, but the real reason for his visit or the outcome of that visit was never known. However, CNN says, "On Sunday, three days after Thanksgiving this year, President-elect Joe Biden slipped and hurt his foot while playing with his dog, Major." They reveal every aspect of his fractured foot that was revealed to the public, then ask, "Notice the Difference?" This is CNN's brilliant and logical conclusion: "Transparency in matters of health and, well, everything else, is fundamental to a functioning democracy. And we have had the opposite of that for these last four years." Ah, yes all will be well because Joe Biden is honest about his foot. See, nothing to be worried about.
The democratic party has been shifting right for many decades. During Bill Clinton's years in office he shifted the party much further right, and when almost out the door he passes NAFTA and overturned Glass Steagall. They haven't changed their trajectory ever since. The whole party side lines the progressives among them, so why wouldn't opportunistic, non-progressive Biden, pick Neera Tanden? I dislike Clinton, because of her love of war. In a John Pilger interview with Julian Assange, Assange called out Clinton's love of power as sick, so he felt sorry for her. He was being much too kind. Anyone who is such a staunch supporter of Clnton as Tanden is, no doubt adheres to the same political ideology, and has the same desire for power. The hypocrisy among too many democrats is nauseating. Remember Albright who said their was a place in hell for any woman who didn't vote for Clinton, yes the one who thought 500 thousand children dead from sanctions was worth it? That video clip of Clinton describing what marriage should be, a bond between a woman and man, sacred, yeah right, and that from a woman who has never been unwilling to morally prostitute herself for power or money if it advances her political career.
How much does it take to realize virtually every bureaucrat and politician in all of government among every party is a in it for the power and position? How much does it take? This woman is just one in a near infinite list of actors that act as parasites on productive society. It doesn’t matter which party, it doesn’t matter which ideology they claim to represent. They are laughing at everyone. A new “young and exciting” charlatan comes along, and old worn out bag like this rears her head, they are all the same.
Sure, the bad news is that she's a corporatist, a militarist, a liar, and a bully but the good news is, as The Washington Post fawns, that her "parents immigrated from India" and that she "would be the first woman of color to oversee the agency." In other words, all of the things that actually define who she is as an individual (like her choices and her character) may be bad, but all of the things which she has inherited and over which she has had no control (like where her parents are from) are good. This is where the idpol-neoliberal "non-aggression pact" gets us: Horrible people in power enacting the same horrible policies as before, but at least they have the politically correct skin color and sexual organs.
"media outlets will lose whatever lingering credibility they have"
Legacy media have no credibility left. One thing I've noticed is that people who religiously read the New York Times are completely uninformed about many of the most crucial events of the day.
It's not that their readers have opinions on the events of the day that are merely aligned with the positions of the Times, rather it's that they do not even know about entire areas of the news because the Times has chosen to simply disappear stories that are inconvenient.
These are smart people, who consider themselves well informed, but objectively are not.
I am really starting to love the Substack concept. Actual journalism!!!
"You can’t run around expecting people will take you seriously when you warn of the dangers of toxic, moronic conspiracy theories when you yourself embrace, elevate and promote the most prolific and reckless purveyors of them."
Well THAT is obviously wrong. Witness the NY Times, The Bezos Post, CNN etc and their unhinged promotion of the Russia hoax without ever admitting that they produced reams of lies and misinformation for political reasons. They certainly expect people to still take them seriously and the ridiculous thing is that people still DO!
"If Joe Biden succeeds in empowering someone like Neera Tanden without extreme opposition from supposedly adversarial journalists, not only Democrats but also these media outlets will lose whatever lingering credibility they have to denounce conspiracy theories and to defend the legitimacy of U.S. elections."
I expect a fawning article praising Biden's choice of Tanden over at The Intercept any day now.
Wait, what?
Are you actually saying that the Dems have done exactly what they accuse their enemies of doing?
The hell you say!
That would never happen.
Corey Robin had a revealing interaction with Tanden back in 2016. His story about it reveals the true extent of the toxic trash that is Neera Tanden:
<blockquote>A few days ago, I had a strange experience. I got trolled—some might say gaslighted—by the person who many think will be Hillary Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff.
Her name is Neera Tanden. Tanden is the head of the Center for American Progress, the Democratic Party think tank that works closely with the Clintons.
[...]
Electronic Intifada had excerpted some clips from the Committee’s public deliberations about, among other issues, Israel-Palestine. The hearings had originally been broadcast on C-SPAN. I was struck by the force of West’s moral witness, and what I saw as Tanden’s visible impatience, which you can evaluate for yourself at the 4:40 mark on the Electronic Intifada video.
The next day, Tanden responded to me on Twitter.
[...]
Tanden makes three moves here.
First, she claims—twice—that she was simply not there during the Committee’s deliberations on Israel/Palestine. Not for “any” of those deliberations.
Second, she accuses me of lying.
Third, she asks that I correct my statement.
[...]
So let’s recap.
Tanden said she wasn’t there for “any discussion of Israel/Palestine.” That’s not true. She was.
Tanden claimed that I was lying. That’s not true. I wasn’t.
Tanden asked me to correct my tweet. But what was there to correct?
And never once does she say: Sorry. I was wrong. I was there. I apologize for claiming you were lying. Not even one sentence of that.
[...]
Why am I writing about something so stupid and small at 3 in the morning on a Friday night?
Three reasons.
First, notice the amateurishness.
This is the head of a major DC think tank who could well be Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff. What is she doing on a Tuesday morning firing off salvoes at a Brooklyn College professor about a matter of not terribly great importance—and getting it completely wrong?
[...]
…my second point.
Actually, it’s not mine. It’s Astra Taylor’s. Astra is a documentary filmmaker.
When someone commented on Facebook that they couldn’t understand why a powerful player in DC would be so obsessively monitoring her mentions on Twitter, particularly in response to a not terribly important person like me, Astra made a shrewd observation:
[...]
Never underestimate the narcissism—or amateurishness—of America’s ruling classes. While people like Tanden are in meetings with other important people, where God knows what or whose fate gets decided, they’re keeping their eye on their Twitter mentions, making sure no one’s looking at them cross-eyed, making sure they’re someone whom you don’t want to cross.
[...]
Now I can come, at last, to that, my third point.
So Neera Tanden jumped to fame in my little world exactly five weeks ago, when she and blogger Matt Bruenig crossed swords. (You can read all about the substance of that spat in the various links regarding the incident that I’ve scattered throughout this piece.) Within 24 hours, Matt was fired from his position as a blogger at Demos. Since then, we’ve not heard a word from Matt, save one piece he wrote for Jacobin. A prolific blogger and social media presence, whose voice was everywhere, all the time, particularly on Twitter, has gone silent.*
[...]
So I leave you with this question (and it really is a question): If Tanden can act this way in the face of verifiable evidence that’s plain as day, and there for everyone to see, when the stakes are so low, is it completely implausible that she would act in a roughly similar fashion when the evidence is not so publicly available and not so easily accessible and when the stakes are much higher? When she has an even stronger and more self-interested reason for covering her tracks?</blockquote>
https://coreyrobin.com/2016/06/25/neera-and-me-two-theses-about-the-american-ruling-class-and-one-about-neera-tanden/
Wow! That was quite a hit on Bernie Sanders for his lapdog performance as a Biden backer. Glen must have been saving that up for some time. Don't know if Bernie will roll over as Glenn suggests but Progressive office holders (I.e. The Squad) risk losing many within the movement if they don't start loudly criticizing and denouncing Biden"s appointees, like Tanden.
>>"further fueling the destruction of confidence and faith among Democrats in the legitimacy of the vote totals"
The Democrats, to their credit, used this lesson to take a more pro-active approach to vote totals in 2020. If Ms. Tanden was responsible for teaching them not to rely on the totals produced by feckless voters or Russian hackers, she deserves to be rewarded.
Her proposal to take Libya's oil was copying an earlier statement by Mr. Trump that the United States should have taken Iraq's oil. This demonstrates her ability to build a bipartisan consensus on key foreign policy goals. Ideally, this goal should be announced in advance of the next war, not merely appended as an afterthought, once the opportunity has passed. (In reality, it won't have much effect, since international oil is priced in petrodollars, so for the cost of printing a few dollar bills, the US can take anybody's oil. However, it would help build public confidence in foreign wars, since all the talk about the United States wasting trillions of dollars on useless foreign wars has a depressing effect on morale).
I expect Ms. Tanden's appointment to breeze through the Senate confirmation process, as Mr. Biden can tell the Senators behind the scenes that if they reject her, he will pick Mr. Sanders.
Don't worry about Tanden, and her lack of character. CNN tells us not to worry about anything regarding the Biden presidency. Why? "Joe Biden's broken foot reveals how different his White House will be from Donald Trump's" The article then goes on to say that Trump went to Walter Reed Medical Center, but the real reason for his visit or the outcome of that visit was never known. However, CNN says, "On Sunday, three days after Thanksgiving this year, President-elect Joe Biden slipped and hurt his foot while playing with his dog, Major." They reveal every aspect of his fractured foot that was revealed to the public, then ask, "Notice the Difference?" This is CNN's brilliant and logical conclusion: "Transparency in matters of health and, well, everything else, is fundamental to a functioning democracy. And we have had the opposite of that for these last four years." Ah, yes all will be well because Joe Biden is honest about his foot. See, nothing to be worried about.
The democratic party has been shifting right for many decades. During Bill Clinton's years in office he shifted the party much further right, and when almost out the door he passes NAFTA and overturned Glass Steagall. They haven't changed their trajectory ever since. The whole party side lines the progressives among them, so why wouldn't opportunistic, non-progressive Biden, pick Neera Tanden? I dislike Clinton, because of her love of war. In a John Pilger interview with Julian Assange, Assange called out Clinton's love of power as sick, so he felt sorry for her. He was being much too kind. Anyone who is such a staunch supporter of Clnton as Tanden is, no doubt adheres to the same political ideology, and has the same desire for power. The hypocrisy among too many democrats is nauseating. Remember Albright who said their was a place in hell for any woman who didn't vote for Clinton, yes the one who thought 500 thousand children dead from sanctions was worth it? That video clip of Clinton describing what marriage should be, a bond between a woman and man, sacred, yeah right, and that from a woman who has never been unwilling to morally prostitute herself for power or money if it advances her political career.
How does that Who tune go?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
How much does it take to realize virtually every bureaucrat and politician in all of government among every party is a in it for the power and position? How much does it take? This woman is just one in a near infinite list of actors that act as parasites on productive society. It doesn’t matter which party, it doesn’t matter which ideology they claim to represent. They are laughing at everyone. A new “young and exciting” charlatan comes along, and old worn out bag like this rears her head, they are all the same.
Bloomberg reporters suggest her nomination is DOA.
We came, we saw, her nomination died.
Her nomination says more about Biden than it does about this disgusting individual.
Biden and his people think of Tandon as a progressive. If they keep at it, 2022 may well be a Dem washout.
Meanwhile, Neera herself has moved on from being a fake progressive to fake liberal.
https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1333465105556672512?s=20