Sen. Dianne Feinstein's Deterioration

[lpetrich]

Back to Rebecca Traister at The Cut.

Reached by phone two days after 19 children were murdered in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in late May, Feinstein spoke in halting tones, sometimes trailing off mid-sentence or offering a non sequitur before suddenly alighting upon the right string of words. She would forget a recently posed question, or the date of a certain piece of legislation, but recall with perfect lucidity events from San Francisco in the 1960s. Nothing she said suggested a deterioration beyond what would be normal for a person her age, but neither did it demonstrate any urgent engagement with the various crises facing the nation.

“Oh, we’ll get it done, trust me,” she assured me in reference to meaningful gun reform. Every question I asked — about the radicalization of the GOP, the end of Roe, the failures of Congress — was met with a similar sunny imperviousness, evincing an undiminished belief in institutional power that may in fact explain a lot about where Feinstein and other Democratic leaders have gone wrong. “Some things take longer than others, and you can only do what you can do at a given time,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t do it at another time. And so one of the things that you develop is a certain kind of memory for progress: when you can do something in terms of legislation and have a chance of getting it through, and when the odds are against it, meaning the votes and that kind of thing. So I’m very optimistic about the future of our country.”

What sick happy talk. She doesn't seem very aware of what is going around her.

Then DiFi's long career. She started out in 1961 the California women’s-parole-and-sentencing board, and she sentenced a lot of abortion providers, since abortion was illegal back then. These were “all illegal back-alley abortionists. Many times, the women that they performed an abortion on suffered greatly. I really came to believe that the law is the law.”

Her memories of back then were good. “Under the indeterminate-sentence law, most sentences carried a low of maybe six months and a high of ten years,” and “There was one case, her name was Anita Venza. And over and over, she committed abortions on women. I said when we were sentencing her, ‘Anita, why do you continue doing this?’ And she said, ‘I feel so sorry for women in this situation.’ ”

Nevertheless, DiFi had continued to sentence AV.

But did Feinstein feel for her? “Oh, yes,” she replied. “But she was a dedicated … She was going to continue to do it. There’s no question. She had been in state prison and been paroled and was brought back.”

When I pushed further, asking Feinstein what it felt like now to be on the verge of a future in which providers like Venza could once again be sentenced to prison, and in which the law will once again be the law, she declined to fully acknowledge the chilling implications of the rollback on the near horizon, retreating instead behind impenetrable platitudes. “Well, one thing I have seen in my lifetime is that this country goes through different phases,” she said. “The institutions handling some of these issues have changed for the better. They’ve become more progressive, and I think that’s important.”

Doesn't seem like much of an answer.

 

[lpetrich]

Feinstein’s 1969 race for the Board of Supervisors might have found echoes in Ocasio-Cortez’s groundbreaking 2018 campaign, but the differences between the two women’s early paths are stark. Ocasio-Cortez ran a low-budget grassroots campaign out of her small Bronx apartment and was outspent by Joe Crowley, her heavyweight Democratic-primary opponent, 18 to one. Feinstein’s friends-and-family campaign, in contrast, was funded by San Francisco’s elite and entailed auctions of Ansel Adams prints and a free surgery by her father. It was what many believed at the time to be the most expensive campaign in San Francisco’s history.

Like a cartoon of efficient, rule-bound, Tracy Flick–style white femininity, Feinstein promptly threw herself into her role as the head of the board, San Francisco’s city council, transforming it from a part-time civic gig into a full-time study in technocratic control. She got there early and stayed late while her fellow supervisors, who needed actual jobs to support themselves, showed up when they could. “She crafted reams of legislation,” Roberts writes, “convened citizen advisory committees, performed ceremonial functions, demanded reports from bureaucrats.”

The some of the strife and violence of 1970's San Francisco. She ran for mayor a few times, but failed, and in 1978, decided to quit politics. But that year, a certain Dan White murdered mayor George Moscone and BoS member Harvey Milk. As head of the BoS, she became mayor.

Feinstein has maintained that her devotion to centrism was born of the tumult that led to her rise. “It was as if the world had gone mad,” Feinstein writes in Nine and Counting, a 2000 book about the nine women then serving in the U.S. Senate, describing her decisions to pursue the job of interim mayor in the wake of the assassinations and to run for reelection less than two years later. “The city needed to be reassured that there would be some consistency as we put the broken pieces back together … From that nonpartisan experience, I drew my greatest political lesson — the heart of political change is at the center of the political spectrum.”

A rather dumb theory of political change. I think that it always starts out near the edges, though to succeed, it does have to convince the center.

Activist Cleve Jones:

“It’s not just being in the middle so you can get votes in Fresno as well as Berkeley,” said Jones. “It’s that she believes in the power of the system to protect and manage. She’s all about order.”

After losing a race for governor in 1990, DiFi ran for Senator in 1992, and won.

Even during that 1992 race, Feinstein’s willingness to adopt established norms was evident. “Pundits would remark that if there was a model for a woman senator, it would look like Feinstein,” recalled Rose Kapolczynski, who ran Boxer’s 1992 campaign. “In other words, a woman who looked and acted like male senators looked and acted.”

 

[lpetrich]

More from The Cut. Rebecca Traister: "If women changed the Senate’s image, they did not always change its character." - they sometimes become much like the men that they succeeded.

When Feinstein started in the Senate, she enforced its dress code, which reflected her own pearl-wearing respectability: No pantsuits for female staffers; they had to wear skirts or dresses. But even as Senate rules relaxed, Feinstein kept her standards intact. As recently as 2017 it was reported that women in her office were required to wear stockings and skirts of a certain length. Her very first speech on the Senate floor was in support of Bill Clinton’s landmark passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, but when it came to the leave policy in her own office, she was behind the curve. In 2014, Feinstein’s office provided only six weeks of paid family leave, half of what many younger senators were offering both new mothers and fathers. (It’s 12 weeks now.)

Feinstein is, by multiple accounts, a terrifying boss to work for, famously stealing the old line “I don’t get ulcers; I give them.” During her race for governor in 1990, former employees, according to author Celia Morris, “called her imperious, hectoring and even abusive, claiming that she would dress down a hapless victim in front of others and would neither apologize nor admit it if she proved to be mistaken.” Within six months of her arrival in the Senate, 14 of her aides had departed (compared to three for Boxer), with 11 quitting and three fired.

With her mental deterioration, what is she like nowadays? Do her staffers have to nanny her? If so, how does she put up with that?

Feinstein’s expectations of her staff have consistently remained sky-high. She has all of her aides — around 70 people — compile a two-to-four-page report of everything they did during the week, every week. Over the weekend, Feinstein reads them and then quizzes individuals on their reports in all-staff Monday meetings. Some saw these gatherings as democratizing. Others found them to be a tortured study in hierarchical protocols. Multiple former staffers spoke of the strict seating arrangements, with senior staffers around a middle table in a giant conference room, their aides in seats in a ring behind their bosses, and the most junior people standing at the periphery. “Everyone there had to be prepared, no issue too big or too small,” said one aide from the 1990s. “So it could be, ‘What is happening with the foreign-aid package?’ Or it could be, ‘I’m looking at a report of how many incoming letters we had and how many outgoing, and why is there such a backlog in responses?’ ”

“If you weren’t good at responding to that kind of Socratic interrogation technique, she didn’t make your job easy,” said the aide. “On the other hand, do I admire a senator who was as focused on how fast constituents got responses as she was on a foreign-aid package? I sure did.”

That's 70 * (2 to 4) = 140 to 280 -- a lot of pages to read.

 

[lpetrich]

The Cut:

From the moment Feinstein got to the Senate, she embraced its rituals and practices, the clubby procedural stuff that at one time brought senators from competing parties together with a sense of their own power and responsibility — and sometimes even enabled them to get things done. “She is a model senator,” said Jeffrey Millman, who managed her 2018 campaign. “She loves this work, and she is really good at it.” But as with so much of her career, Feinstein’s record in the Senate is a mash of righteous fights and dispiriting capitulation, her ideological positioning scattered and her aims pragmatic, geared toward the goal of firm governance above all else.

Seems very in character with her San Francisco days.

When it comes to foreign policy, Feinstein has been a hawkish defender of drone strikes and expanded surveillance, calling Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing “an act of treason.” But the pinnacle of her career was her damning 6,700-page report from 2014, which she commissioned as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, taking on the CIA’s role in torturing terrorism suspects during the Bush years.

Fmr Sec'y of State George Shultz: “Dianne is not really bipartisan so much as nonpartisan.”

Her devotion is to the system, in which laws are made, regulations are implemented, and oversight is prized. She is stalwart in her conviction that the way to make progress is to maintain open, friendly lines of communication with members of the opposition party, a stance that her defenders argue is crucial to getting anything accomplished in the Senate.

 

[lpetrich]

Then her and the assault-weapons ban of 1994. But in 2012, "She told the New York Times that one reason the Senate could no longer pass an assault-weapons ban was the rising abuse of the filibuster. Of course, Feinstein has been unwilling to commit to ending it."

She's a firm institutionalist, and a Senate institution is its filibuster, even in the form of calling in a hold on a bill. I like to call it the Taste-of-Armageddon filibuster, after the ST:TOS episode with the fake war.

She acknowedges that politics have "hardened" around gun laws in recent decades, that "everything has become more partisan than it was when I came to the Senate. When I came to the Senate, Bob Dole was the leader, and he stood up and said … What was it? Tom, help me, what was the quote?" That was one of her aides, and he filled him in about how Senator Dole thought that this issue was too important for a filibuster.

But then she did some almost hopelessly incoherent babbling.

When I suggest to Feinstein that the partisan hardening has been asymmetrical, that her Republican colleagues have grown more radical and rigid while she and many of her fellow Democratic leaders have been all too willing to compromise, she responded, “Well, yes. I think that’s not inaccurate. I think it’s an accurate statement. What did you first say about Democrats moving?” I repeated that it was the right that has gotten more inflexible while the Democrats have been willing to cede ground.

“I’m not sure,” she responded. “But it’s different; there’s no question about it. And I think there is much more party control. When I came to the Senate, we spoke out, and we learned the hard way, and we took action, and it was clear what was happening with weapons in the country. It still is. And in a way, the weapon issue was a good one because we were able to pass the first bill. When was it, Tom?” Mentzer reminded her that the assault-weapons ban was passed in 1994.

 

[lpetrich]

DiFi has been an institutionalist for most of her professional life, seeing order and management and hierarchy as a way to manage unruly activists and protesters.

The crowds who came through the door with battering rams in January 2021 looking to kill a vice-president surely had chilling echoes for Feinstein, but days later, in the name of the Senate, she was defending Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — a man who had offered up a sign of solidarity to the insurrectionists — in their attempts to delegitimize the election of Joe Biden.

Much like Dan White murdering George Moscone and Harvey Milk, something that she was very close to, like putting her finger into a bullet hole in HM's wrist. But she does not seem to have made the connection.

“I think the Senate is a place of freedom,” she told reporters. “And people come here to speak their piece, and they do, and they provide a kind of leadership. In some cases, it’s positive; in some cases, maybe not. A lot of that depends on who’s looking and what party they are.”

She seems barely aware of what's going on.

“She’s like Charlie Brown and the football,” said Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s senior legal analyst, describing Feinstein’s unstinting belief that her institution is still functional. “But she doesn’t see that the whole football field is on fire.”

About DiFi embracing Lindsey Graham,

Of that “appalling moment” with Graham, Cleve Jones recalled thinking, “Oh my goodness, you just really cling to this notion of civility and bipartisan discourse. One can marvel at it. But it’s genuine. It’s the core of her.”

 

[lpetrich]

Then about seniority.

The Senate rewards its longest-serving members with power. The most dynamic freshman senator in the world would not have the influence that a senior senator does, which is part of the pernicious trap that has created the bipartisan gerontocracy under which we now wither.

House Democrats were especially bad, with their most recent top three leaders in their early 80's, much like the Soviet Union in its last years.

“If we lost her seniority … every other state benefits from California not having seniority, because our appropriations are so much larger,” said a former campaign manager for her, describing how helpful seniority is for bringing home the bacon, er, pork.

She has the conviction, held by some in their later years, that she knows better. This is the woman who helped to create Joshua Tree National Park but who also spoke dismissively to the youth activists from the Sunrise Movement who came to her office in 2019, telling them they didn’t understand how laws are made. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” she said to the group, insisting, “I know what I’m doing.” But now, with age and all its attendant authority and power, comes serious diminishment.

Then about her mental deterioration.

It is also true that she works among plenty of colleagues who are dumb as a box of hammers and have been so since their youth. “I’ve worked in politics my whole life,” said Jones, “and met a lot of politicians who are little more than cardboard cutouts propped up by staff. It’s important to understand that she was never that person.”

But the fact that many of her colleagues, on their best days, are less acute than Feinstein on her worst is exactly the kind of dismal, institutionally warped logic that has left us governed by eldercrats who will not live long enough to have to deal with the consequences of their failures.

 

[lpetrich]

From the comments,

Traister did not bother to report on the voluminous amount of award winning investigative reporting detailing decades of conflicts of interest between Sen. Feinstein's job performance and her family's public-private business interests. See: "Richard C. Blum is Dead but not (yet) Forgotten."

...
"she has practically acted as a Republican" is the most accurate part of this statement. I lived in the Bay Area from Dec. 1978 onward and in SF's Mission District from May 1988 to August 2013. Feinstein is the definition of a corporate Democrat and a stone corporate stooge. Her policies were always tailored to the needs of the business elite, housing speculators and landlords.

So she's like fellow San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi, another corrupt corporate Democrat.

Someone commented that she should have retired in 2018 so she wouldn't embarrass herself with her senility.

Blah blah blah, she’s like 200 years old, get her out of office. I’m a former Senate staffer and everyone who works there knows she is too senile for her job. Her chief of staff is running the show as the de facto Senator; Feinstein is just a puppet at this point. I can name a bunch of other senators that are just as mentally disconnected from reality as she is: Grassley, Leahy, Inhofe, Collins, etc etc.

Some people wanted a maximum age, but some people continue to be good leaders even in advanced age.

My only concern about a maximum age is that it would rob us of Bernie Sanders, who is sharp, vital, and fighting for a lot of stuff that Americans need. That said, he's the exception -- not only cognitively, but in terms of his grasp of what we need for a livable future *and* his grasp of how Congress has changed ( = bipartisan cooperation isn't possible when the GOP is intransigent abt anything that wd give Dems a "win," even as GOPs fail to meet their own constituents' needs by playing this childish game).

Bernie Sanders is 81 years old. He has a long political career, starting when he was 40. Mayor of Burlington VT 1981 - 1989, US House 1991 - 2007, US Senate 2007 -

Maybe term limits? Sanders doesn't have misty-eyed visions of the Senate's glory bc he arrived relatively recently.

He's been in the Senate for 16 years, though it's less time than for DiFi.

 

[lpetrich]

Then this.

Schumer skips over Feinstein, 89, for Senate president pro tem, third in presidential line of succession | Fox News - "Current Senate pro tem Patrick Leahy retiring at end of year" - "A source familiar with the caucus discussion told Fox News on Tuesday that Schumer, D-N.Y., will instead pick Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., for the job."
She's 72, the same age as Chuck Schumer himself.

Pat Leahy is 82, and unlike DiFi, he quit before he degenerated too much.

 

[blastula]

Feinstein asks for Judiciary replacement after calls for resignation

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health complications and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary re…

thehill.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health complications and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary replacement for her on the Judiciary Committee.

Her announcement came hours after Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) called for her to resign from the chamber.

Feinstein has been sidelined since late February after being diagnosed with shingles. Her absence, coupled with that of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has left Democrats working at an even 49-49 at best during that time.

However, Feinstein’s post on the Senate Judiciary Committee has meant that the panel has been unable to advance partisan nominees through to floor votes over that period.

At the moment, there are 14 pending judicial nominees who have had hearings before the panel, but have not received a vote by the committee. Since Feinstein has been absent, the panel has had to cancel three committee markups for nominees.

A spokesperson for Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would abide by Feinstein’s request. “Per Sen. Feinstein’s wishes, Majority Leader Schumer will ask the Senate next week to allow another Democratic Senator to temporarily serve on the Judiciary Committee,” they said.

I wonder if she was vaccinated.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Feinstein asks for Judiciary replacement after calls for resignation

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health complications and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary re…

thehill.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health complications and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary replacement for her on the Judiciary Committee.

Her announcement came hours after Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) called for her to resign from the chamber.

Feinstein has been sidelined since late February after being diagnosed with shingles. Her absence, coupled with that of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has left Democrats working at an even 49-49 at best during that time.

However, Feinstein’s post on the Senate Judiciary Committee has meant that the panel has been unable to advance partisan nominees through to floor votes over that period.

At the moment, there are 14 pending judicial nominees who have had hearings before the panel, but have not received a vote by the committee. Since Feinstein has been absent, the panel has had to cancel three committee markups for nominees.

A spokesperson for Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would abide by Feinstein’s request. “Per Sen. Feinstein’s wishes, Majority Leader Schumer will ask the Senate next week to allow another Democratic Senator to temporarily serve on the Judiciary Committee,” they said.

I wonder if she was vaccinated.

The vaccine is only 90% effective. Good to have, but not a perfect shield.

 

[lpetrich]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein asks to be temporarily replaced on Judiciary Committee : NPR
Someone must have twisted her arm very hard to make her agree that she is not completely competent.

Feinstein, 89, hasn't cast a vote since Feb. 16, missing nearly 60 of the Senate's 82 votes so far this session. She's the oldest member of Congress, and said in early March that she was hospitalized with shingles.

Ro Khanna on Twitter: "It’s time for @SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people." / Twitter

Speaking on All Things Considered Thursday afternoon, Khanna elaborated:

"I don't think that someone no matter how remarkable their achievements can be absent in their role, especially in this moment, where we need an active senator to get the president's judges confirmed, when we need a senator from California pushing back against that the transphobia, the gay phobia that we have been hearing, and that's why I hope that we will have someone in that role," Khanna said.

The disease:  Shingles caused by the virus that causes  Chickenpox the  Varicella zoster virus A vaccine is available:  Varicella vaccine

 

[lpetrich]

DiFi returned to Congress on May 10. Feinstein returns to Congress but told to keep ‘lighter schedule’ amid recovery | The Hill

“Even though I’ve made significant progress and was able to return to Washington, I’m still experiencing some side effects from the shingles virus,” she said in a statement. “My doctors have advised me to work a lighter schedule as I return to the Senate.”

...
Her return once again gives Democrats a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a 51-49 advantage in the full chamber.

...
Feinstein has been at the center of criticism in recent months, specifically as the Judiciary Committee canceled three straight markups and couldn’t approve nominees throughout March.

...
Even without Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee has voted through eight nominees in recent weeks, advancing them to final Senate votes. Four nominations remain stalled and need her presence to move them along.

 

[lpetrich]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein makes her return to Judiciary Committee - Roll Call

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke first. “I’m glad to welcome our colleague Sen. Feinstein back to this committee, but I will say what’s going to happen next I think is going to be quite unfortunate for the American people,” Cruz said.

“Because what we’re about to see this committee do is vote on several nominees who are so extreme, who are so unqualified that they could not have a prayer of getting even a single Republican vote on this committee,” Cruz said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office details complications from shingles illness | AP News

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office said Thursday that she is suffering from Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a complication from the shingles virus that can paralyze part of the face, and that she contracted encephalitis while recovering from the virus earlier this year.

Feinstein’s return leaves her party on edge - POLITICO - "As relieved as Democrats are to have her back, they’re loath to openly discuss her condition beyond generic well wishes as her party holds its collective breath."

 

[lpetrich]

I remember thinking that the D's could do with DiFi what the R's did with Strom Thurmond in his last years: keep her in a hospital in DC and take her in for votes in a wheelchair or on a gurney. But from the looks of it, that may already be happening.

I got the idea of sending her from CA to DC for that, with her going in a military transport or else in a medical van driving across the continent.

May 16. Feinstein responds to questions about her absence from D.C. - Los Angeles Times

Then another reporter asked about the well wishes she’d received from her Senate colleagues since her return last week.

“What have I heard about what?” she asked.

“About your return,” the reporter replied.

“I haven’t been gone,” she said. “You should ... I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

“You’ve been working from home is what you’re saying?”

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting. Please, either know or don’t know.”

She thought that she was in DC the whole time, casting votes, even though she was absent.

 

[lpetrich]

May 18. Nancy Pelosi's daughter is taking care of Dianne Feinstein - POLITICO - "A quiet caretaking arrangement has raised questions about whether Nancy Pelosi has the ailing senator’s personal interests at heart."

Nancy Corinne Prowda, NP's oldest child.

Not only did Prowda escort Feinstein around Capitol Hill last week, she was again at her side yesterday, helping aides surround the senator in a Capitol hallway as a reporter tried to speak to her. Multiple people familiar with the arrangement say it’s only the most visible part of a quiet but critical role the Pelosi family has played in helping to take care of the ailing senator, both in Washington and San Francisco.

By all accounts, the arrangement is rooted in a long and friendly relationship between Feinstein and the Pelosis — twin pillars of San Francisco politics. But among some of those who are aware, it has also raised uncomfortable questions about whether Nancy Pelosi’s political interests are in conflict with Feinstein’s personal interests.

NP wants Rep. Adam Schiff to succeed DiFi, but CA Gov Gavin Newsom has promised to appoint a black woman if DiFi resigns. That could mean Rep. Barbara Lee, and she is not AS. So NP wants DiFi in office for the rest of her term, so as not to give BL a head start for that Senate seat.

Seems like a  War of succession

 

[Politesse]

Sounds very "speculative". Would not mind having Barbara Lee on the other side of the Hill, though. One of ny least disliked politicians.

 

[lpetrich]

Dianne Feinstein Relies Heavily on Staff to Function in Senate - The New York Times - "The California Democrat is surrounded by a large retinue of aides at all times, who tell her how and when to vote, explain what is going on when she is confused, and shield her from the press and public."

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a monthslong absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staff members settled the 89-year-old California Democrat into a chair at the dais as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote on one of several of President Biden’s judicial nominees whose approval had awaited her return — she appeared to read from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide seated behind her.

“I ask to be recorded as voting in person on the three nominees considered earlier, Mr. Chairman, and I vote aye now,” she said.

The aide knelt next to her and whispered into her ear in between votes — popping up repeatedly from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read from and presenting her with a folder that appeared to contain background information about the nominees.

Sort of like Senator Strom Thurmond in his last years: CNN.com - Thurmond recovering after taking ill in Senate - October 2, 2001

Back to the NYT.

At times she has expressed confusion about the basics of how the Senate functions. When Vice President Kamala Harris was presiding over the chamber last year in one of many instances in which she was called upon to cast a tiebreaking vote, Ms. Feinstein expressed confusion, according to a person who witnessed the scene, asking her colleagues, “What is she doing here?” Staff members have been overheard explaining to her that she cannot leave yet because there are more votes to come.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems like the Senate Democratic leadership has been keeping DiFi going for the reason that the House Republican Leadership has been keeping George Santos going. They need the votes.


Sean Tuffy on Twitter: "The whole Dianne Feinstein thing is basically elder abuse at this point" / Twitter

and

Kathleen Geier on Twitter: "The behavior of Feinstein's staff is elder abuse, pure and simple. And it's long past time that we start discussing it in those terms." / Twitter

noting
Will Stancil on Twitter: "I can’t help but notice ..." / Twitter

I can’t help but notice that this article about Dianne Feinstein’s feisty and defiant refusal to resign contains no direct quotes from Feinstein, just anonymous statements from “aides and confidantes” who may or may not have access to her but have hijacked her seat.

“We can’t even prove the senator is conscious, much less lucid, but it’s absurd and sexist to want her to resign” is a new nadir for entitled Dem gerontocrats.

The actual policy conflict here is “Senators are effectively life appointees, American royalty who can occupy the seat and dole out influence to staff until their lifeless body is dragged out of it” versus “What? No that’s insane”

This situation would be beyond infuriating regardless of where it was happening, but the fact that Feinstein represents the largest state, 39 million people, and Dem leaders are unbothered by her absence, tells you everything you need to know about the party’s codger generation

I propose a test: Dianne Feinstein appears on a live camera feed, gives a brief extemporaneous statement explaining when she hopes to return, and draws a clock. If she cannot successfully navigate this formidable gauntlet, she immediately resigns

Noting Dianne Feinstein digs in - POLITICO - April 14 - "The senator’s confidants and allies scoff at her detractors and are firing back." - about her absence

 

[Derec]

Draws a clock, lmao.

I guess she should start her statement showing she is oriented to person, time and place too.