Remember when patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrels? At Joe Biden's White House, it's now 'racism,' with a side of 'sexism,' being used as a means to garner Senate support for problematic cabinet picks.

It's definitely the latest party line on why some extremely nasty cabinet picks of his are going down in flames in obtaining confirmation at the Senate. It's not anything to do with them, it's just all that racism and sexism in that Democrat-controlled Senate that's to blame for the first big fail to come for team Biden.

According to Politico (Hat tip: Power Line)

Women’s rights activists and allied Democrats are growing increasingly vocal about what they call the unfair targeting of women and people of color nominated by Joe Biden to top posts in his administration.

Their fears had been bubbling for weeks, as Biden’s nominees of color came under sharp attack from conservative groups or saw their nominations delayed or opposed in greater numbers. But the worries burst out into the open over the weekend as Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget neared defeat at the hands of a Democrat.

“There's a double standard going on,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. “Her nomination is very significant for us Asian American and Pacific Islanders. I do believe that this double standard has to do with the fact that she would be a pioneer in that position.”

Oh, really? File under 'preposterous.'

The reason that Neera Tanden's nomination for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and two other cabinet nominees, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for the Department of Health and Human Services post, and Deb Haaland for the Department of the Interior, are being opposed is their positions on issues, and that's in all cases. Leftwingery does not sell in most Republican circles, not even with Mitt Romney, in this instance. He doesn't like this bunch either.

In the case of Becerra and Tanden, it's also their actions in past positionas and in the case of Tanden, it's her amazingly hateful politicized personal behavior both public and private.

Haaland, for one, was being sold to the public as a Native American, but position-wise, she's opposed to drilling as all good leftwingers are, something that will cost millions of American jobs and drive gas prices skyward if she gets her way in that post. Benefit to the country? Zero. Benefit to the greenie lobby and petrotyrants like Vlad Putin? Big. Reason enough to vote her down and it has nothing to do with race. Perhaps the Ute tribe of the Four Corners region can enlighten her about the importance of drilling.

Becerra not only has far left positions but a record as vindictive prosecutor, going after the Little Sisters of the Poor to force them to support abortions against their consciences, to take just one example, and there are many more. He's also got the odor of corruption: His 2008 nomination for U.S. Trade Representative fell apart after news emerged that he lobbied for leniency for a drug trafficker after the latter's rich dad made big donations to the Democratic Party. Pay for play, Xav? He's also an extremely unpleasant person: I've personally seen him scold poor young Latino students at a Cal State college for not being political enough despite the fact that they took their Friday off to come see him, not being convinced that signing up for overpriced Obamacare was a good thing, and asking whether Social Security will be available for them by the time they retire. He's textbook nasty and the Latino kids noticed and told me about it. So to claim that opposition to his nomination to manage health and human services is about race is completely false.

Tanden, though is the grand poobah of leftwing awfulness -- in thought, word, and deed. She's a consumate political operative whose every thought is abou how to gain advantage for her HIllary branch of the Democratic Party, according to this negative 2016 New Republic account of her. She certainly moved in the John Podesta/Democratic National Committee circles that rigged the Democratic Party nomination for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016, as Donna Brazile described in her book, too. She's a Hillary Clinton right-hand woman who garnered a prized position at the Center for American Progress at a base salary of $368,000 a year, after Podesta, the man whose emails got hacked and leaked to WikiLeaks based on his use of a password called 'password' departed. Her bilious private emails got exposed, too, and while the New Republic argues that private emails maybe shouldn't be something to fairly judge someone about, she had a mountain of public statements, too, via Twitter, revealing her unending spirit of hate. Apparently the big-salary CAP gig was a do-nothing job, because she spent a lot of time tweeting and has since has made political enemies across the board. This isn't about being of South Asian heritage or female. This is about publicly stated hate for pretty much all of humanity, other than Hillary Clinton, to whom she was ferociously devoted. She may have been one of the embittered Democrat operatives who cooked up the Russian collusion hoax because they were so convinced that Hillary Clinton had won the election.

But the press is reporting that the opposition to her was all about her long record of bile on Twitter alone, with some calling it hypocritical, given President Trump's tweets. Unlike Trump, though, Tanden scrubbed her Twitter site of its thousands and thousands of hate-tweets directed at Republicans, including Republican moderates such as Susan Collins, regular Republicans such as Ted Cruz ("Vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz," she tweeted), as well as Bernie Sanders and even his staff, She's also been accused of dispatching trolls. Collins was all set to support her  ... until she looked closely:

According to Politico:

Tanden has tried to remedy perceived shortcomings in recent days. Twenty four hours after the White House said she’d had those 35 meetings, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tanden had talked with 44 senators. Tanden had asked the staff of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for a meeting, though Collins dug in further the more she sifted through Tanden’s record.

By Tuesday Collins said that the installation of Topher Spiro, a former Center for American Progress staffer and a Collins critic on Twitter, at the OMB “raises questions of whether she’s even capable of leaving behind her extremely partisan approach.” Collins called Spiro a “troll of mine.”

“Why would you put someone who is a troll against a United States senator in a key position in OMB?” she asked. 

Tanden at her hearings conditionally apologized "to the extent" anyone's feelings were hurt, and promised in Senate hearings that she would from hereon out be a nice Office of Management and Budget director in the $239,000 a year position.

But temperamentally, she looks like a pretty bad match for the position. It's not just her tweets, it's how she behaves: 

Start with far left publication The Nation, whose soft spot is for Bernie Sanders. They consider Tanden the Democrat "establishment" and therefore don't like her. They have an impressive list of reasons from their perspective to find her despicable:

Ask any number of leftist writers who spend a lot of time on Twitter about Tanden, and they’ll tell you the same stories: how she announced plans to fire the unionized employees of CAP’s affiliated website, ThinkProgress, and to replace them with scabs (ultimately she just shuttered the site following public backlash); how she allegedly hit a colleague, future Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, for daring to ask Hillary Clinton about her support for the Iraq War; how she named a victim of workplace sexual harassment in a staff meeting; how she pressured critics of Israel at ThinkProgress, bowing to the demands of pro-Israel lobbyists; how she accepted tens of millions in donations to her ostensibly progressive think tank from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, insurance companies, and the autocratic regime of the United Arab Emirates; how she once suggested compelling Libya to use its oil wealth to pay the United States for its 2011 regime change operation. And that’s to say nothing of the many times Tanden has tried to bully or intimidate journalists (such as The Week’s Ryan Cooper, or me) for writing accurate sentences about her, or complained to managers or editors about comments that she didn’t appreciate—not to mention her open contempt for Sanders and his millions of supporters.

For a record of bad behavior this long, her nomination prospects are looking bad. Not even Mitt Romney supports her. Bernie Sanders will be a sellout if he does -- he hasn't stated what he will do. Sen. Joe Manchin has come out and said no. The nomination is clearly in trouble, and Politico says the Biden White House "botched' it. 

Now we have the yell of racism, directed at anyone who doesn't want someone like that managing the U.S. budget, including which government agencies get funds, subject to OMB pre-conditions.

According to National Law Review:

While OMB is known for its central role in drafting the President’s annual budget submission to Congress and coordinating agency funding proposals, it has other significant responsibilities within the executive budget process. Federal statute requires OMB to release, or apportion, Congressionally appropriated funding to agencies in specified increments to prevent shortfalls and ensure sustained financial resources throughout the fiscal year. OMB may include conditions for apportionment, such as requiring agencies to take certain actions before funding becomes available. It therefore employs substantial authority over when and how an agency may receive and expend its funding. OMB additionally is tasked with coordinating the administration’s legislative actions. Divisions within OMB clear agencies’ testimony before Congress, advise the President on Statements of Administration Policy, and review significant proposed and final rules prior to their publication. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to hold Neera Tanden’s confirmation hearing on February 9 and the Senate Budget Committee will hold its hearing on February 10.

It's likely significant that Rep. Judy Chu, who sits on the House Ways and Means committee, which determines taxation and works very closely with OMB, is her big champion, leading the charge of racism on her fellow Democrats? It sounds like the pair have some big plans to stick it to the American public and Tanden's failing nomination has put a spanner in the works.

With nothing out there to defend Tanden, Chu and her pals are crying racism, sexism, any ad hominem claim they can on this nomination whose oversized baggage is just to costly for anyone with a brain to vote for. It's a thin charge. Tanden's flameout is based on her own actions. Same with Becerra and Haaland. The racism charge is cheap but it's apparently all they've got left. 

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