Neera Tanden Unplugged
“An existential moment for both the party and the country.”
Tanden Talks
NEERA TANDEN’S LIFE TODAY looks eerily similar to how it did eight years ago: Donald Trump is president, Republicans control Congress, and she is leading one of the most influential institutions in Democratic politics, the Center for American Progress.
Except, of course, nothing is quite the same.
As Tanden sees it, everything is a lot more terrifying. Independent institutions like universities and law firms are bending the knee to Trump in ways that never happened the first go-round; there aren’t any Republican officials willing to stand up to the president like Sen. John McCain did; and the Democratic party’s brand, she believes, is in even more trouble now.
Tanden, who served in senior roles in the Biden administration, including as the director of the Domestic Policy Council, has at times been a divisive figure in her own party, primarily for her pugnacious posts on social media and willingness to scrap with progressives. After grueling confirmation hearings, then-West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin tanked Tanden’s 2021 nomination to lead Biden’s Office of Management and Budget over her social media posts.
Yet four years later, Tanden’s give-no-fucks attitude seems to be what Democratic voters are craving. After staying quiet online during her White House tenure, she is roaring again, earning adoration from some members of the party for viral blowups on CNN with Republican strategist Scott Jennings and for calling out members of her own party—whether it be Sen. Chuck Schumer for his handling of budget negotiations or Doug Emhoff for not quitting his law firm after it struck a deal with the Trump administration.
As much as any figure in Democratic circles, she illustrates the establishment’s embrace of political confrontation as an end goal and not just a means to get there.
I sat down with Tanden last week to get a better understanding of how she views the state of the Democratic party and the role she and CAP are trying to play as the party regroups from 2024. That conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, is below.
LAUREN EGAN: How are you thinking about this moment for the Democratic party?
NEERA TANDEN: I think it’s an existential moment for both the party and the country. In my optimistic moments, I think Trump is over-reading his mandate. I think the opportunity is there [for Democrats] to capture a broad swath of the country. It just requires us to offer an alternative.
A lot of people have used this Carville view of holding back. [NOTE: James Carville has argued that Democrats should stay quiet on hot-button political and policy issues, so GOP “dysfunction” can come to the fore and the American people can see “the Republicans crumble.”] My view is that every election has been a change election. If Democrats were silent, Trump would be able to communicate that we are just for the status quo. We have a lot more work to do to offer an alternative.
EGAN: Democratic voters want the party to “fight” right now. What does that mean to you?
TANDEN: I think people confuse ideology and approach. When people are scared, they want protection and they look to leaders to protect them.
If you walk around saying ‘Donald Trump is an existential threat, and I’m gonna fight tooth and nail to stop him’ then people are gonna expect you to do that. It’s a little hard to understand that you’re at a rally saying ‘Donald Trump is an existential threat and I gotta do everything I can as a leader,’ and then two weeks later hand over your votes for a concurrent resolution on the budget.
I think one of the grave mistakes some of our congressional leaders make is to think that we’re dealing with normal politics. I don’t think we’re dealing with normal politics.
EGAN: If Democrats treat this moment like normal times, are they part of the problem?
TANDEN: That is part of the problem. Not to relive the past here, but this was really the problem in the whole debate about the CR [continuing resolution—that is, the debate that concluded with Schumer and a handful of other Democrats joining Republicans to avert a government shutdown]. I think there is a big dividing line between people who think we’re dealing with normal politics and people who think we’re dealing with existential insanity.
But, people will gravitate and shift and learn. I think Cory Booker, he understood. I think [his record-setting filibuster] broke through because both of my kids in college were like, “Oh, look at Cory Booker.”
EGAN: How is this iteration of CAP different from the first Trump presidency?
TANDEN: Trump number two is far scarier. All of the consequences are more grave. The genuinely scary thing to me is how many independent institutions are bending the knee, and nobody really did that before.
EGAN: You’ve been outspoken on the law firms.
TANDEN: I’ve said to friends at Paul Weiss [the first firm to strike a deal with Trump]: How do we expect the veterans who are getting fired to stand up and say, ‘Oh, it’s wrong, what you’re doing’? How do we expect those people to actually have their voice heard and not worry about retribution if the wealthiest lawyers in America are going to cave?
What’s ridiculous is all these lawyers know these EOs are grossly illegal. I’m also like, ‘Who wants a lawyer who’s just going to cave under pressure?’ I think it’s horrifying.
EGAN: How does it feel to be active on X again after you lost your nomination in large part because of your posts?
TANDEN: [Laughs.] I’m a little less risqué on my Twitter than I’ve been before.
EGAN: All of that happened with your nomination—and now people seem to want a bit more punchiness from the party.
TANDEN: I really think people just want people to be honest. And I’m a candid person. The whole idea of what I went through and then Pete Hegseth became secretary of defense—this was obviously a joke.
I think social media is mostly a destructive force in human society, because it just makes people hate each other. But the positive power of it, I do think you can tell when someone’s being candid or not. It’s just pretty abundantly clear no one’s writing my tweets.
EGAN: But it still seems like Democratic officials are struggling with that authenticity piece.
TANDEN: The thing that Trump has—although I think he’s a megalomaniac, narcissistic fascist—people think he means [what he says] because no sane person would say it otherwise. There’s no political handler.
I obviously think he’s awful in every way. But I think that one of the things to learn from it is that people want some level of deep candor.
EGAN: It seems like there’s a fear within the party about saying the wrong thing and getting roasted online. And it’s made officials less willing to be themselves.
TANDEN: When you’re in opposition, your job is to add people to your coalition, not subtract them. This effort at purity-testing people—I think that’s unhealthy to learning. You have to learn from what your opposition thinks or what people in the middle think. It actually makes you worse at your job if you think everyone who disagrees with you is some kind of bad person.
Donald Trump is a monster, but it’s important for me to understand what the impulse is behind his policies so that we can counter that.
I’ll give crime as an example. The crime rates were coming down [during the Biden years], but people were still concerned about it and we should have addressed that. Crime can be coming down and you can still legitimately think it’s a problem. If you say, ‘Well, crime is coming down,’ then people aren’t gonna think you’re gonna solve that problem, because you’re not recognizing it.
EGAN: Was that one of your lessons learned from the Biden administration?
TANDEN: I thought we should have dealt with immigration a lot earlier.
EGAN: There’ve been a lot of books published re-examining the Biden White House. What do you make of them?
TANDEN: I’m hoping I’m in none of them.
EGAN: Are you going to read them?
TANDEN: My genuine take about all this? The whole universe has bigger fish to fry.
🫏 Donkey Business:
— There’s yet another twist in the legal drama in North Carolina’s Supreme Court race, the results of which have yet to be certified after Justice Allison Riggs won in November by just over 700 votes. A quick refresher on the case: Riggs’s GOP opponent, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, has been trying to get about 65,000 votes disqualified, which would then make him the winner. His legal case is, to put it politely, incredibly disingenuous.
The legal dispute made its way up to the very court whose membership is in dispute, and on Friday the Supreme Court of North Carolina issued an order throwing out roughly 300 votes and telling about 5,000 military and overseas voters that they have 30 days to submit copies of photo IDs for their votes to count. In sum: Shit is getting pretty real for Riggs.
To say that Democrats are alarmed by what is going on in North Carolina would be an understatement. They believe that, if Griffin is ultimately successful, Republicans will try to replicate this model to overturn election results in other states. In a press conference this week, DNC Chair Ken Martin said if Griffin wins in court, North Carolina voters will never be able to “walk out of a voting booth and be confident” in their vote, and called it “January 6th with robes and suits.”
— By now, you’ve probably seen the devastating photo of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attempting to shield herself from the cameras during an unexpected press event in the Oval Office on Wednesday. If she runs for the presidential nomination in 2028, the ads against her are almost too easy to make.
As the New York Times writes this weekend, Whitmer’s visit to the White House highlights a divide in how Democratic governors are approaching Trump. Leaders like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have been publicly critical of the president, reflecting the “fight” mentality of many Democratic voters. Meanwhile, other governors—including Whitmer, New York’s Kathy Hochul, and California’s Gavin Newsom—have been more conciliatory, taking phone calls and meetings with the president.
Whitmer was at the White House this week for what was supposed to be a private meeting with Trump to discuss funding for an Air National Guard base and aid to help with an ice storm. She did not expect to end up in the Oval as Trump signed executive orders targeting those who opposed his 2020 election conspiracies. In an interview with the Times, Whitmer explained her decision to go to the White House in the first place:
“Public service is about putting the people of Michigan before my own interest,” she said. “My job was to try to get help for people who were suffering as a result of the ice storm, to land more investment at Selfridge air base, to protect the Great Lakes and to fight for the auto industry. And that’s what I was doing. . . . I’m always going to show up for the people of Michigan, and that’s probably why I got elected by double digits.”
— Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, announced this week that he would leave his position in June. In an interview with the New York Times, Wikler said he was considering running for office after taking some time off to be with his family. In the meantime, he’s starting a Substack (everyone’s doing it these days. . . ).
My open tabs:
— The Washington Post compiled a list of “surprising” things that Americans are panic-buying amid uncertainty about how Trump’s tariffs will play out . . . including one shopper who bought a two-year (!!!) supply of instant coffee. And the Wall Street Journal has a story this weekend on how young women are already starting to “recession-proof their lives.”
— The most wholesome story you will read about podcast stars.
— The dire wolf is back (except maybe not quite, after all).
We are at the moment the German people faced in early 1933. Hitler/Trump in power. Fuhrer/Executive Orders flying fast and furious — illegal and morally reprehensible, for the most part. Large companies and law firms cowed. The judiciary under attack. The reichstag/legislature crumbling. Sociopaths as head of govt. Will America fare any better?
Americans of all political persuasions do need a message that is far more than just ‘we hate Trump’ or ‘Trump is destroying democracy. Far too many of his supporters don’t really know how our Republic is supposed to work anyway, nor it appears do many of them care. If they did, they never would have re-elected a man who so utterly disdains and disavows it no matter what they were paying for a dozen eggs or how many hungry Haitians they imagined coming for their pets.
I have no adequate words, however, for the lickspittle Republican legislators and party leaders who, knowing how our Republic works have three times inflicted this man on the rest of us - once in 2016, once most egregiously after January 6th, and once again during the 2024 campaign. I’m no longer a man of faith, but I do know my Bible, and the story of Peter three times denying Christ inevitably comes to mind.
We could do a great deal worse than Abraham Lincoln, who spoke and continues to speak to us all from that blood red battlefield. “Four score and Seven.....
He understood ‘the great task remaining before us’ as well or better than any American who ever lived. The only question is whether we do.