Leadership failed Dianne Feinstein — and us

Assessing what’s lost

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I had an entire issue all planned out for today, but breaking news has compelled me to push it back and send out something very different. I’ll have the original newsletter out later tonight, assuming the rain doesn’t wash New York away. What a Friday!

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein has died at the age of 90. She lived a trailblazing life of public service, and she will be remembered as one of the most important political figures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, yet it’s the circumstances of her last few years that should now force a reexamination of who should and shouldn’t hold elected office.

Feinstein should have retired in 2018, when she was 85-years-old and faced a serious and legitimate Democratic primary challenger nearly 45 years her junior. Putting politics aside — though her staunchly moderate politics no longer really fit California voters — it was clear then that she was growing weak and slowing down.

It would have been a perfect moment to step aside, enjoy the adulation accorded to her for such a distinguished career, and enjoyed the final chapter of her life with friends and family. Instead, the party establishment closed ranks and pushed her over the line, and it’s been one disaster after another ever since.

The fights with child climate activists, the death of her husband, the confusion at Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the bad falls and shingles and infections and cognitive decline, being rushed back to Washington because Democrats refused to let her rest, getting wheeled around the Capitol like a withered scarecrow… it all added up to very public elder abuse, because other old Democratic leaders didn’t want to give up power or face questions about their long-term viability in office.

Nobody should have to work at 90, and it’s irresponsible to place people that age insuch high-stress, demanding jobs with such high stakes for the nation. Feinstein clearly had dementia; that she wanted to continue to serve only shows that nobody around her was selfless enough to intervene. I wrote months ago about the quiet indignities that come with such a decline, my experience, and how it’s incumbent on the people around those suffering from slips into dementia to guide them to safety when they don’t want to let go.

Clearly, people had too much to gain by propping Feinstein up and hiding behind the wishes of someone who sometimes thought she was still Mayor of San Francisco, a job she last held when Reagan was president. Nancy Pelosi reportedly wanted to prevent California Gov. Gavin Newsom from appointing a new incumbent — he promised to appoint a Black woman — to a Senate seat that would otherwise be up for grabs in 2024, because that would have made it harder for her protégé, Rep. Adam Schiff, to win the seat. Pelosi herself will run for re-election at age 86.

A more ambitious and honest Democratic Party leadership would have taken action. Now, Feinstein’s death has not only put the party temporarily down a senator, it’s created an even bigger obstacle for the essential work of the Judiciary Committee, one of the only places where Democrats could use their Senate majority to effect permanent policies.

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin embraced the archaic blue slip system and refused to remove Feinstein from a critical role that she could no longer perform. In doing so, he invited Republican abuses and Feinstein’s absences to block many of President Biden’s judicial nominees, creating a critical backlog that may not be addressed any time soon.

Feinstein was the tie-breaking vote, so her death means that Democrats can’t confirm judges with anything close to resembling a normal pace now. There are 69 judicial vacancies at the moment, with 35 nominees awaiting confirmation. Perhaps some will pass through committee with Republican support and maybe some of those 35 nominees awaiting a Senate floor vote will get confirmed, but losing Feinstein’s vote there will also make things tricky, especially with Sen. Joe Manchin doing everything he can to reduce his losing margin in next year’s Senate race to within single digits.

Even worse, Feinstein’s death means that the Judiciary Committee cannot issue subpoenas in any investigation into Supreme Court corruption. This is absolutely catastrophic, especially going into a new term of the Supreme Court rife with conflicts of interest for many of the right-wing justices, especially Clarence Thomas and Thomas Alito.

Once again, Democratic leaders’ inaction has come back to haunt them. I can’t pretend to understand what motivates them, though I suspect they’re simply less motivated to change the institutions that have served them so well; the longer you stay in office, the less likely it is that you’ll be around for the doom your indifference may cause. They choose comfort over change, taking us down with them. It’s a shame that Feinstein’s legacy will invariably be tied up in the scandal of Democratic gerontocracy, much as Ruth Bader Ginsburg wound up having that asterisk next to her name.

Democratic leaders need to learn to pass the torch, and part of that is guiding their oldest colleagues toward a life outside of elected office. Whatever happens in the 2024 election, Senate Democrats need to perform a serious reimagining of their power structure.

Right now, they can’t even get half the caucus to call for Sen. Bob Menendez, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair who was very clearly bribed by Egyptians and devout opponent of limiting foreign influence in Washington, to step down. They can, however, all vote to change the dress code on the Senate floor to preserve the “institution” that they’ve actually allowed to crumble all around them.

There is more to life than holding power, and if they don’t give it up, they’re going to doom generations beyond them to never having the chance to forge their own future.

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