Dianne Feinstein dies at 90
RIP.
Feinsteins career was “filled with firsts,” as this article reminds us:
She was the first woman president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first woman mayor of San Francisco, and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
She was a senator for 30 years, a Democrat “stalwart,” as some articles have dubbed her. That was certainly the case; she only seemed a tad less to the left than most of her Democrat colleagues because they moved so far from the Democrat norms of the 90s.
Lately she had become very frail and obviously infirm. Her husband had died in 2022, and I’m going to assume that took a toll, too. There’s been plenty of speculation about her replacement, as well. That’s why this sort of article seems preposterous to me:
There is a phenomenon in politics whereby if someone is old and infirm but remains alive for a while in a diminished state, they can almost persuade people that they are immune to death.
So it was with John McCain, who died at 81 from a vicious brain cancer that left no hope of recovery, but whose actual death still sent a deep shudder through the political world. So, too, was it with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death at 87 after multiple battles with cancer shattered her admirers and pitched the Supreme Court rightward.
And so it was this week with Dianne Feinstein …
Actually, all those people were ill for quite some time before death, and what to do when their time came had been a near-constant topic of conversation while they were still alive. That was certainly true of Feinstein.
Many people thought that perhaps Kamala Harris would be replacing her, since Newsom – who gets to appoint Feinstein’s successor, at least until the next election – has specified, a la Joe Biden, that it would be a black woman, and since the party would dearly love to remove Harris from the second-in-command position. I have long said it won’t be Harris, because she would never accept such a demotion. Now it seems even less likely to be Harris, because Newsom has declared that he’ll appoint someone temporary, just until the 2024 election determines a successor:
Newsom’s choices all run political risks.
A handful of Black women in office have been floated as possibilities, including Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell.
Lee and others lashed out at Newsom earlier in the month after he indicated he would select a caretaker instead of picking from the current slate of candidates.
“The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election,” Lee tweeted.
Not that any Democrat in the state will stop voting for Democrats, or for Newsom himself if he happens to end up being the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2024.
Yeah, my sense is that it doesn’t really matter. Newsom can do whatever he wants in California without real consequences despite all this supposed angst over him appointing a “caretaker”.
At any rate at this point I doubt Newsom himself is thinking in terms of his prospects in California but rather in terms of his future presidential prospects. Because sooner or later he’s going to take his shot. As any modern, high level Democrat politician knows, actual results are immaterial but image and appearance are everything. So appointing a black women is infinitely more significant than appointing a person who may actually be good at the job regardless of their race/gender/sexual orientation. It’s how we’ve all been blessed by Kamala Harris, surely the most effective and well liked Veep in the History of the Universe! And despite what they may claim, obviously the Democrat voters don’t care.
They could dig up Charles Manson, run him as a Democrat, and he would still win an election in California. That, plus the “jungle primary” has assured that pretty much no one by a Democrat will win any state-wide office.
I remember many years ago when I lived in California, and the options were Crazy, Crazier, and Craziest. Crazy seemed like the least painful option. Crazier won. On the upside, Craziest didn’t win.
I have mentioned this another time — I have learned that the truly elderly pretty much have to be totally out of it to be considered “non compos mentis.” The bar is insanely high. Only if they are in a coma. The mini-evaluation for dementia is so simple, that it is difficult to fail. Even then, there are lawyers who argue that they are sufficiently mentally stable w to determine their own business.
}}} RIP.
Nope. Rot In Hell. There are a fair number of two-faced politicos who belong in Hell, but she feels like one of those belonging at the head of the line.
I ack that I do not know His Mind, so cannot honestly claim to know her final disposition, but I’m not so charitable that I don’t have an opinion of her which I will not express: It feels very much that she belongs in Hell.
She was always one of the worst of her ilk, and that’s a pretty low bar in the first place. A fat snake couldn’t limbo under that bar.
}}} They could dig up Charles Manson, run him as a Democrat, and he would still win an election in California.
They could dig up CASTRO and run him as a Dem, and he’d win by a landslide. 😀
Hell, they could dig up Stalin, Hitler or Mao. As long as you put a (D) after the name, they’ll get Elected. Cali is unquestionably a completely insane state.
I wonder how competent Feinstein actually was when she behaved so egregiously in the Kavanaugh hearings.
Senator Feinstein Death Not Expected To Affect Re-election Campaign Politics
Sep 29, 2023 · BabylonBee dot com
“Campaign surrogates assured voters that a vote for the California Senator would ensure a continuation of Feinstein’s reliable left-wing voting record. ‘There is no candidate more suited to represent a dead state and a dead republic than a dead Senator,’ said [a spokesperson]. Early polling indicated a 6% increase in her favorability rating in the wake of her death.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/senator-feinstein-death-not-expected-to-affect-re-election-campaign
In the last days of her life, Democrats wheeled Sen. Dianne Feinstein into Congress and TOLD her how to vote instead of letting her enjoy the time with her family. That’s elder abuse.
Erasmus (4:22 pm), voting in the Senate may in fact have been her preferred way of enjoying her remaining time. Why else would she have hung on to that Senate seat instead of being with her family in her dotage?
OBloodyHell says, “They could dig up CASTRO and run him as a Dem, and he’d win by a landslide.”
Y’know, Castro’s son might just be available in the near future: le petit Justin is in deep doo-doo in the Great White North. “In the span of five days, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has managed to alienate the government of the largest democracy on Earth; anger key allies from Washington, D.C. to Canberra; and outrage Jews around the world. . . . Trudeau’s poll numbers are abysmal, with even young Canadians backing the Conservative Party over Trudeau’s Liberal faction, 32 percent to 24 percent.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/justin-trudeau-self-immolation
Why should Newsom let a mere bagatelle like Canadian nationality get in the way of making Ottawa’s Incitatus a U.S. Senator?
Well… with Feinstein at less than room temperature…the game is truly afoot.
Interesting to see how Newsom and his handlers play.
She died today. She “voted” yesterday. What a joke.
Feinstein and Fetterman. The US Senate is a hotbed of fraud.
I’m not so down on the Politico snippet. Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd did seem like they would go on forever. I had something like that feeling about Feinstein. Not so much with McCain, who was publicly ill for such a long time, and didn’t seem artificially preserved — smoked or freeze dried or pickeled or salted — like other aging politicians do. He seemed, for better and (mostly) for worse, active and in command of such faculties as he had until the end.
________
Clearly, it’s wrong for Newsom to restrict his search to a small demographic, but is there something to be said in support of the putdown that Barbara Lee perceives? If someone is chosen because of race and gender, is it better if it’s done with the clear recognition that the appointment is honorary and temporary? Lee is 77, so maybe she would be a “caretaker” appointed simply to check a box herself.
Newsom keeps showing that he is not very good at this. I think he might be failing his deep state audition.
One of my lefty Facebook friends from San Francisco posted a list of Feinstein’s “first” as a woman politician. She left off the list, “First woman senator to be ferried around by a Chinese spy.”
She was 40 years ago and experienced executive who wasn’t obtrusively influenced by the fads which sweep through the Democratic Party like the plague. For example, she had the stones to veto a city council ordinance extending ‘domestic partnership’ benefits to city employees. She was also the rare mainstream Democrat who was willing to say publicly that she had been wrong in taking exception to George Bush the Elder’s course of action in Iraq in 1990-91. She decayed as she grew older, so that 2018 she was propagating Christine Blasey Ford’s hooey.
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The whole saga is indicative of the pathology at the apex and center of our political class. Given her age, work history, personal financial situation, and familial financial situation, she should have retired at the end of 2012 if not earlier. For five years and change she’s jetting across the country every week and spending most of her time in Washington while her husband is back in California terminally ill with cancer. (See Louise Slaughter for another example of this; Slaughter was at least ambulatory and lucid when she died).
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The careers of Feinstein, Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Joseph Biden et al are a satisfactory argument for rotation-in-office rules, annd mandatory retirement for federal officials – (1) no one stands for election to federal office past the calendar year he reaches the age of 72, (2) anyone who has held an elective federal office for 14 of the last 16 years or who will hit that wall should he be elected to a coming term is debarred from standing for federal office, (3) all federal employees who are not elected officials leave office on a standard date the calendar year they reach the age of 76, (4) anyone who has held a particular discretionary appointment in the federal executive for 12 of the last 14 years must leave it. These would require a mix of constitutional amendments and statutory changes.
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A more circumspect set of changes could be effected by amending the parliamentary rules of Congress: (1) if one has held a seat on a given committee for 10 of the last 11 years or will hit that wall during the coming Congress, one must depart that committee; (2) if one has held the position of floor leader of a given caucus (w/o regard to whether or not one was in the majority) for 10 of the last 11 years or will hit that wall during the coming Congress, one must stand down; (3) no one may take office as committee chairman, ranking minority member, floor leader, whip, Speaker of the House, or President pro tem of the Senate if one is over the age of 80 or will reach one’s 80th birthday during the coming Congress; (4) the Speaker of the House and President pro tem of the Senate shall be elected from outside the membership of Congress from among the ranks of serving or retired judges over the age of 60 and shall not have a place in the Presidential succession.
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You could also give members of Congress a qualified right to retain the committee positions they had in the previous Congress, subject to rotation-in-office rules and a couple of other considerations, but require that any open seats on the majority or minority side be filled via lottery. The floor leaders should sit on the rules committee and determine the schedule of floor votes. They shouldn’t have the authority to strip anyone of their committee assignments. Only a vote of the whole caucus should be able to impose that sort of sanction.
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Another thing you could do would be to require that all elections to floor leader and whip have a ‘none-of-the-above’ option, with any candidate losing to ‘none-of-the-above’ debarred from all subsequent ballots. You could also have ranked-choice voting for any such election held with more than two options (i.e. at least two candidates + none-of-the-above). It would be a great deal easier to unload characters like Glitch McConnell and upChuck Schumer if in the first instance they had to compete in a confidential ballot against ‘none-of-the-above’.
Kate – I’ve wondered about Feinstein’s status and the Kavanaugh debacle myself. I can’t imagine that the hit was launched as intended. It almost dribbled out after the main hearings were over, and Feinstein was certainly responsible for that.
But I don’t know what they were planning for it. It could have been the case that they were holding Blasey Ford to launch the attack even later in the process. I suppose it is also possible that there were some on the D team who didn’t intend to lauch the Blasey Ford attack at all (perhaps because they knew she was lying and were worried about the consequences). It can’t have been a secret to the D leadership that Blasey Ford was working with D donors to put together a story and D’s did lose Senate seats in 2018, almost certainly because of their bad behavior over Kavanaugh. Maybe the leadership was trying to keep a lid on it and Feinstein blew their cover?
So yeah, interesting question.
Madame Senator, say “Aye.”
Dianne Feinstein joined the rest of the San Francisco board of supervisors in honoring (Jim) Jones “in recognition of his guidance and inspiration” in furthering “humanitarian programs.”
Yep, Kool-Aid Jim Jones. She , and every other California Democrat
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/how-san-franciscos-democrats-made-jim-jones-and-then-made-his-memory-vanish
I hope she does better at her interview than she did over her last few months in the Senate. She has a lot to answer for.
So besides her slimy hitjob on Kavanaugh, gushing admiration for Jim Jones & her employment of a Commmunist Chinese spy for 20 years, DiFi was a great gal.
Is this a great country or what?
Bill Serra:
As a friend used to say, “It’s got to mean something because it can’t mean nothing,” referring to twenty years of employing a Chinese spy. It would be a great spy who didn’t occasionally trip over his job contradictions and either show some incompetence (didn’t show up as required that one day) or some more suspicious activity. Either be replaced for a more dependable type or have some intel investigate. You don’t have to be a CCP spy to be disloyal to your employer. Maybe the Mob. Or the Other Mob or something.
No routine background investigation?
The guy skated clean for twenty years. Not. Buying. It.
Another thing said friend used to say is, “If it’s this bad, it’s got to be worse.”