The first shot at Joe Biden’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was fired Sunday night. It was reported by the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets that Biden will nominate Neera Tanden to lead the OMB. The position requires Senate confirmation and it looks like there will be a battle over this nomination.

Senator John Cornyn’s spokesman posted a tweet in response to Tanden – she “stands zero chance of being confirmed.” Tanden has been in charge of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, since 2010. She frequently appears on political panels for both network and cable news shows. Tanden is not a unifying choice, to put it mildly. She’s a very vocal leftist who regularly rails against Republicans. Drew Brandewie, Cornyn’s spokesman, noted that Tanden will need Republican votes in order to be confirmed if the GOP maintains control of the Senate.

Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed. https://t.co/f6Ewi6OMQR

— Drew Brandewie (@DBrandewie) November 30, 2020

In a tweet, Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie said that Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden’s past history of “disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need” made her confirmation highly unlikely. Tanden would need 51 votes in the Senate to become head of the OMB; Democrats currently control 48 seats in the Senate, though they are hoping to pick up two more in Georgia as the state’s Senate elections head to runoffs in January.

Joe Biden is busy naming women and minorities to fill prominent positions in his administration. Yesterday the press was busy making a big deal about Biden’s all-female communications team and his economic team choices. In the Biden administration, it will be important to be female, especially females of color. Tanden is Indian-American. Team Biden will say her nomination is historic as the first Indian-American to lead the OMB. She ticks both the female and the minority boxes.

Tanden is a Clinton loyalist who was a surrogate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. It was assumed she would have a place in Hillary’s administration but fortunately, she lost that race to President Trump. Biden is choosing Cecilia Rouse as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers if reports are correct. She is African-American and will be touted as the first black woman to chair the council. Rouse is a Princeton University labor economist. Biden has already named Janet Yellen as treasury secretary.

Joe Biden continues to say he is all about unifying the country and choosing a cabinet that looks like America. His diversity hires, though, are not exactly moderates who will bring Republicans and Democrats together. Neera trashes Republicans but she also sometimes trashes Democrats, specifically the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. She was particularly vocal against the socialists when Sanders was running against Hillary in 2016. Tanden was all in with supporting the Democrats’ bogus Russian dossier against President Trump. She is a proud member of The Resistance.

There is one theory about the appointment of Tanden that may pan out. What if she has been chosen to be a sacrifice during Senate confirmation hearings? With her prominence in television, she’s a familiar face and her ugly remarks are well-known. Perhaps Biden will nominate her to give the Senate Republicans an easy rejection so that other nominees may be spared. Republicans will want to appear to hold Biden’s nominees accountable for their records and she’s an easy one to discredit on her public statements alone.

And there’s the sacrifice to the confirmation gods…. https://t.co/esK3W1ektM

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) November 29, 2020

In the meantime, Tanden is keeping herself busy deleting past tweets that will prove to be awkward under scrutiny.

.@neeratanden appears to have deleted her tweets about Susan Collins, whose vote she'll likely need for confirmation.
h/t @varadmehta pic.twitter.com/atwonFCaMb

— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) November 30, 2020

Watching @neeratanden delete all her negative tweets about Republican Senators is hilarious. Her nomination is already a funeral.

— Garrett Ventry (@GarrettVentry) November 30, 2020

Missed one! https://t.co/MRpjyqdokv

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) November 30, 2020

There is even a tweet about Russians interfering in American elections – the 2016 election.

Hey wait a minute… https://t.co/oo0m2ghpU5

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) November 30, 2020

Tanden’s hearing should be interesting. Get the popcorn ready.