Yes, Donald Trump played the platform like a virtuoso other politicians have used it savvily to bypass gatekeepers and build a base of loyalists. Some have detected sexism in the sudden rush to scold her, but Tanden stands out among Biden’s Cabinet nominees for the edginess of her social media posts.īut Twitter has its own way of tempting you into provocative tweets, and then turning on you-especially when you make enough enemies from different points on the political spectrum, and they find a common moment for revenge.Ī onetime Boston political boss named Martin Lomasney, who wielded power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had an oft-repeated rule for politicians: “Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can wink.” Lomasney would surely have run in the other direction from Twitter, which isn’t just public but permanent. Over the past few years, she tweeted that “a vampire has more heart than Ted Cruz,” compared McConnell to Voldemort, and called Collins “criminally ignorant.” It wasn’t just Republicans she angered she was also known for tweaking left-wing rivals like Senator Bernie Sanders, suggesting in one tweet that Russia had helped Sanders in the 2016 election. Instead, Tanden did what a lot of us do: She went for the dopamine hit, again and again.
And, on some level, she did know: In 2016, she told an interviewer, “I’m willing to concede I should tweet less.” A veteran political player, who might someday need Cruz or Collins or McConnell for a vote, should have known it would do her no good to pile on. And what would have been the loss? The internet is overflowing with snarky diatribes about Senators Susan Collins and Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell.
#TWEETADDER PROBLEMS OFFLINE#
That’s all it would have taken to spare Neera Tanden the situation she’s in: Had she kept her political outrage to herself, or shared it offline in the company of friends, she might be sailing to confirmation as director of the Office of Management and Budget, rather than watching the chances of her nomination slowly dwindle.
It shouldn’t be hard, one would think, to simply not tweet.
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