Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career was filled with firsts, including first woman mayor of San Francisco and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career was filled with firsts, including first woman mayor of San Francisco and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
I don’t understand why not retire. She held on to that seat till the bitter end, for what?
She could have had time with her family and we could have had a seamless replacement. Instead, she got to die at work (basically) and there is a hole in representation right as the government is about to shut down.
I wonder how this will impact the gov shutdown results
I don’t think she had full control of her faculties near the end. Her handlers and power of attorney should have forced her to retire but they didn’t.
Yeah, she’s been clearly a barely functioning wreck, propped up by people who needed her power. It was quite sad.
Her handlers were enjoying making all the decisions and running her Senate office for her, wheeling her around and playing weekend at Bernie’s. I’d say it was abuse but tbh it’s what she deserved and probably what she wanted anyway.
Nancy Pelosi wants someone to replace her, Gavin Newsom wants someone else. Nancy Pelosi wanted her to stay in office until the next election.
It’s all just a game to these kinds of people.
Newsom has been clear that he’s appointing someone as a placeholder so as not to interfere in next year’s Senate race by giving one of the actual contenders (Schiff, Porter, or Lee) the advantage of incumbency. But I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi, being Nancy Pelosi, would prefer the Party put their finger on the scale for the candidate leadership wants (which is probably 77 year-old Barabra Lee)
Aren’t they all in the House right now? Appointing one of them is a mixed bag, because it also leaves their House seat vacant until a special election is held, and Democrats need every vote they can get there. House seats can’t be filled with temporary appointments like Senate seats can.
Pelosi wants Adam Schiff. Newsom stated he wants a black woman (bc ofc he cares about identity politics) in the interim, likely Lee. Pelosi doesn’t want Lee since she’s more progressive than Schiff.
The temporary choice will have a massive leg up as an incumbent in the next election.
He wants a black woman in the seat because despite making up 15% of the population, there are zero black women in the senate. Why wouldn’t they deserve representation in our senate?
Race and gender should be irrelevant in politics. The only thing that should matter in the end are policies, since that is what affects the constituency.
Race and gender now are used as distractions to make people think that someone is more progressive than they really are.
You can still be corrupt if you are a black woman.
This viewpoint is simplistic to the point of losing all sense. As another commenter pointed out, representation is the entire point of a republic. Countries have split and wars have been fought over this exact point. Hell, the United States only exists at all because of it.
Race and gender start to matter as soon as they become significant factors in our laws and that has been a constant from day one. I don’t care how much you think you know, you do not fully understand the perspective of someone with a radically different life than your own, because of what they have faced due to their race, gender, or any other distinguishing factor. They deserve representation so that their perspective is heard and factored into the laws that govern them.
This is the basis of what a republic is. You can’t take race and gender out. You can only over represent your own and ignore others while patting yourself on the back like you solved it. It’s intellectual, moral, and legal cowardice.
Representation is important in politics. It’s the whole point of the system.
It’s a fair point to say race/gender aren’t the most important type of representation. There’s a whole lot of white men in Congress, and as a white man I don’t feel particularly “represented” by Tuberville or Gaetz
Yes, and race and gender don’t play a factor in the policies that are voted for.
You take money from big donors? You will represent those big donors regardless of race, gender, etc.
That’s a fucking joke.
They didn’t want to lose her seat on the judiciary committee. Even if they had to tell her how to vote.
Others have touched on the political machinations aspect.
But a bigger, arguably “real”, reason, is that replacing Feinstein is largely trivial. Democrat from a (kind of) Democratic state. But getting said replacement approved on various committees, some of which are republican controlled, becomes the big mess. Which leads to more dysfunction and power stealing and less ability to even discuss if a vote should occur on something.
It is similar to the RBG issue. She should have stepped down YEARS before she died. She didn’t. And by the time people realized “yo, your ass is old and kind of stupid” it was too late because republicans would have just stalled until they could replace her with someone they wanted… which they did.
Because of her senority, she was one of the leaders of the party. I agree these elderly politicians need to retire, but that means at best they get replaced by a freshman senator of the same party with no political power. It’s the same reason why McConnell hasn’t retired even though he can’t finish a speech without zonking out and being whisked away by his handlers.
You mention family and smoother governance, but to some people their work connections are more important to them than their families and she could have thought that resigning would have been less smooth than trying to finish out the term.
Those things are possible, but I really think that her identity was being a senator and she didn’t want to give that up.
Fuck her then. It’s the US Senate, not daddy’s law firm. No one should be in the Senate just because it makes them feel important. The job is too important for that.