Democratic (Party) Direction

She literally says "we need to put entitlements on the table."

Yes. She literally said that. She literally says "we need to put entitlements on the table" within a lot of context that is consciously omitted in Bragman's description. Which is why anyone who only read the tweet and did not watch the clip would get a distorted idea of what the clip contains. I suspect Bragman knows not everyone will watch the clip.

The major context he omits is that she was dutifully falling in line behind a major initiative of the Obama administration, not just pushing entitlement cuts in a vacuum. And that initiative contained many major elements other than entitlement 'reform' and these were packaged as a Grand Bargain compromise.

My point is not that Obama's Grand Bargain was a good idea, because it wasn't. Rather my point is that distortion by careful omission of pertinent context is still distortion and repeating it just contributes to the noise, not to clarity.

I feel more good about our city council telling the mayor to go fuck herself during the budget cycle though! Much more good.

The major context he omits is that she was dutifully falling in line behind a major initiative of the Obama administration, not just pushing entitlement cuts in a vacuum.

You did not just trot out ‘just following orders.’

As Joe Biden would say, “come on, Jack.”

It’s not distortion or omission to say she championed entitlement “””reform.””” It’s right there on tape. That she was just following Obama’s shit lead doesn’t change reality.

She’s a grown ass woman with plenty of money, if she didn’t support cuts to Social Security and Medicare, she could have said that.

You did not just trot out ‘just following orders.’

No. I didn't. But you did.

I cannot think you aren't entirely aware that this construction contains echoes of the Nuremberg Trials and by suggestion, pulls in the whisper of Nazism and war crimes into a discussion of Neera Tanden's politics. Are you just a 'natural' at this method of argumentation, or did you have to study and sweat to achieve it?

Yes, that's it. I was calling her a Nazi. Much like saying one would follow others off a cliff - a situation where you are, in absolute fact, saying that they are a human-sized lemming.

Fun fact: Since 2009 when he joined, Donald Trump has tweeted 58,700 times. Since 2010 when she joined, Neera Tanden has tweeted 87,500 times.

she deleted one of them today:

https://i.imgur.com/1HTwXaA.jpg

Number one cost-saving measure is going to be having every agency's twitter account staffed exclusively by Neera between the hours of 1 and 4 a.m.

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) November 30, 2020

Walker Bragman, Smart Political Thinking Man

hiring Neera Tanden isn’t anything other than a Fuck You to the Left/ Berniecrats.

Who, again, I’m willing to bet turned out better for Joe than the “embarrassed” Republicans they spent the entire campaign courting.

they don’t ‘have’ to do this. Neera isn’t some magical operator in DC. She’s just another asshole. get an asshole who doesn’t want to cut social security ffs how is this hard.

Shameful of Walker Bragman to use AI to deepfake that video of Tanden advocating entitlement reform and middle-class sacrifice to solve the deficit (lolololol) and upload it to the CSPAN servers.

I don’t think it’s a purposeful fuck you to anyone, they just don’t have the imagination to look anywhere but to the barnacles attached to the hull of the SS Democrat.

OTOH, this comes directly after the Squad came out against Bruce Reed as OMB director... so maybe.

Yes, that's it. I was calling her a Nazi.

Yes. It is very helpful to deny doing what no one said you did. My point was that you did not call her a Nazi, but still found a subtle way to suggest it.

My sense is that you're a natural, not that you invented all these methods of generating a rhetorical fog independently, but that you find they come easily and they just feel so good and right.

The idea of “just following orders” is applicable more widely than the single point of rhetorical origin, Aimless, and this is an embarrassing detour

If I’m a fucking middle manager and I notice a bunch of toxic waste sitting next to my workplace’s dumpster and my boss says “just toss it in the dumpster” then I’m “just following orders” but it has fuck-all to do with Nazism and everything to do with being cognizant of morality and acting against my own personal set of beliefs

fwiw Neera Tanden can’t even claim that, because her own career has been based around the analysis of issues for crafting public policy positions! You don’t go on to run CAP, the complete purpose of which is to analyze public data in order to come up with data-justified talking points, without having your own policy goals and ideas about what’s on the table

the idea she has had no agency in her career is absurd, and if you truly believe that, then it’s more of an indictment of her abilities — so she just comes up with justifications for whatever policy is put in front of her?

For what it’s worth, I do think that is one of the weaknesses of CAP as a think tank: a lot of their studies I’ve read seem to be very much in the vein of “here is our proposed solution, and here are the statistics pulled from the Department of Labor, etc. that support it”

for all the talk of technocratic ideals, it’s very much a cart-before-horse situation, which honestly, a lot of data-led decisions are. not a lot of “well, we analyzed the data and came up with this novel solution that no one had ever thought of” in their publications

the idea she has had no agency in her career is absurd

it most certainly is absurd. good thing I didn't say that!

I said she was endorsing the idea as part of a larger package deal that included major concessions from conservatives in order to be enacted, but this important context was omitted and continues to be ignored by every response to my post. The Grand Bargain was envisioned as a means to break a wide variety of logjams over budget priorities, taxation and allocation of revenue. It wasn't just about cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. There were notable goodies in it for liberal/progressive policy goals, too. But the framework of deficit reduction and benefit cuts was too deferential to the Tea Party agenda that drove the 2010 election.

I also said the initiative for this proposal came not from her, but directly from Obama, and she was acting as a follower not a leader, which is true enough, but not my main point. Treating it as the main point is a deflection. Her falling in line behind Obama was a careerist move, and her pending nomination is partly a reward for that loyalty. This is part of how DC operates. It is ugly, but it's worked this way literally for centuries now.

Working up a good lather of outrage over her falling in behind the president's major policy initiative of 2011 seems overdone. As I said, we knew Biden's administration would tilt this way and will continue to do so. I don't need to be freshly outraged every other day in order to retain my sense of what the goals are. They've stayed constant all my adult life and I'd rather save my attention and energy for work that might improve society, including non-political work.

Has it occurred to you we’re not outraged, but standing by our convictions? It was bad for the Obama administration to put Social Security on the table, it was bad for Tanden to go to the negotiations with that, and it was ridiculous when Biden was on the campaign trail and he denied ever anticipating or participating in a talk where Social Security benefits were on the table. I’d respect them admitting it and perhaps explaining what those “notable goodies” were instead of deflecting!

For what it’s worth, you’re spending your attention and energy on this very issue, much more verbosely than I am!

Has it occurred to you we’re not outraged

When I hear quacking, I think I'm listening to a duck. When I hear tones of outrage, I think I'm listening to outraged people.

And I wasn’t implying you said she had no agency, only that there’s a dichotomy between “she was just doing what her boss said” and “she absolutely could decide not to work toward a goal if she personally found the terms abominable” that you seemed to rhetorically jump on because you know the truth is in the middle. You can’t play it both ways by saying she _wasn’t_ just following orders and then go on about a greater context that’s missed. Of course there’s a context, but the context for some people is that _you do not ever put that on the table_. The context is irrelevant in that case!

I’m more of an incrementalism melt than I sometimes let on and if it was, hey, let’s push the age at which you can collect benefits up, maybe I’d be willing to roll with it in the, as you say, right context. But acting like you have a greater understanding because the _context was misleading_ is wrong because others aren’t seeing Social Security as negotiable regardless of the terms.

Well, I often read your words as self-satisfied bluster but I know you’re a kinder person than that so I take a pinch of salt

Is he?

there *was* the go-drink-bleach episode

Aimless, funneling bleach into the gullets of ilxors since 2001.

luckily you always miss

Even I recognize that despite my near constant disagreements with Aimless, he is a kind person.

There was the time he cosigned calling my African-American brother a Nazi because he was a graduate of the Air Force Academy and then said because my brother is dead, he wasn't around to be offended by the characterization anyway. Very kind.

Hands up everyone who has only ever posted wonderful posts they are proud of to ilx, because this is some bullshit lads

(hand raises

middle finger extends)

Lol in context of this being your actual last post, tbf

Is her boyfriend asking her to poop on his face? Or is her boyfriend asking for mouth?

― You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 1 December 2020 20:27 (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you for underscoring my argument.

I doubt your argument could score any lower tbh

(hand raises

middle finger extends)

― You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, December 1, 2020 8:39 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

agree

So on one side you have Yellen who will have a significant command over the economy and who has had a clear anti-austerity/anti-neoliberal stance for a while now and on the other side you have Tandem who will have an obviously much lesser role and who will face higher odds than most to get confirmed, some of you chose to focus on Tandem’s dumb twitter career. No matter how many Keynesian new deal types he is going to bring in, no matter how much he is going to go against the neo-liberal rulebook, you guys are going to move the goalposts because you have deemed he is evil no matter what. Hate him as much as you want, that’s okay, but people like Krugman, Warren, Faiz Shakir who are ~much more attuned to these things than us armchair analysts have praised some of those nominations for opening the door to true deficit spending.

I’ve been encountering skepticism from everyone from my mom, when I was a teen, to skepticism on ilx about the fact I’m more vocal about the bad choices than the reasonable ones. But really, no one sends congratulation notes to power when a Yellen is nominated because that serves no one — the people
voting against her nomination don’t care if I call their offices. The complaints register louder, although only marginally so.

I’m more than willing to give high-fives, back-pats, and re-election votes when I agree with choices in government! But keeping the people you vote into office on task isn’t an exercise in congratulation, it’s about voicing your preference when they stray off the path

I mean, what do I do, share a facebook post about Yellen being nominated and comment “Yes!”

if you want that here: Yes!

I'd say that Janet Yellen ought to do more thinking and less yelling

I believe you mean Janet should do less Yellen

that's right

Biden, Blinken, Yellen — what is this, a gerundocracy?

— A.J. Bauer (@ajbauer) November 23, 2020

heyooooo

Did anyone here actually criticize Yellen? As I said in the other thread (one thread etc) she's the least objectionable name thus far and even she has her hand in devastating Democratic policy (NAFTA and the Glass-Steagall repeal).

Being better than Obama's cretins shouldn't merit hosannas from the left.

working on the inevitable now

And the base keep rahmin' rahmin', and rahmin' rahmin', and rahmin' rahmin', and

some of you chose to focus on Tandem’s dumb twitter career

are you complaining that nobody yelled at you for being positive about Yellen's nomination or

we didn’t start yellin about Yellen being a decent pick so we’re bad

on the bright side, the Lincoln Project ghouls didn’t jockey for a position and decided they’re the new repubs so they won’t get in

fwiw Neera’a inability to log off is good and not bad

(I focused on Tanden's dumb career advocating war crimes and Social Security cuts, AFAICT. Others focused on her career outing sexual harassment victims and union busting.)

Holding up a Faiz Shakir tweet like a crucifix made of garlic against the vampires of the left is a power move though.

https://theintercept.com/2020/12/01/biden-administration-transition-obama/

(I focused on Tanden's dumb career advocating war crimes and Social Security cuts, AFAICT. Others focused on her career outing sexual harassment victims and union busting.)

tbf I pointed and laughed at her spending the day going back through her tweets to delete one from four years ago where she very very badly fabricated an email from someone else fraudulently exonerating herself of shitty policy-designing professional experience

but only because I had learnt ITT the same day of her inability to log off

It’s really a testament to the fact she was still in the grinding phase of her career that few tagged her as a Podesta or Abedin level person when she really was! I have to give her credit for doing the work and only being on that second tier of criticism, but trying to make up for a lack of public controversy by being very online