Feinstein and Lear

Today on TAP: California’s senior senator is doing her country, her party, and herself no favors by clinging to office.

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More and more, the story of Dianne Feinstein is grimly calling to mind that of Lear. She’s not, thankfully, howling on the moor, but consider this exchange she had with a couple of reporters who came across her on Tuesday afternoon. One of them asked her about the well-wishes her Senate colleagues had been giving her since she’d returned to Washington last week. The dialogue, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, went as follows:

FEINSTEIN: What have I heard about what?

REPORTER: About your return.

FEINSTEIN: I haven’t been gone. You should … I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.

REPORTER: You’ve been working from home is what you’re saying?

FEINSTEIN: No. I’ve been here. I’ve been voting. Please, either know or don’t know.

Restated in Early Modern English, that exchange could fit nicely into Lear’s third act.

This afternoon, The New York Times reported that during her longer than two-month absence from Washington, as she suffered from shingles in her San Francisco home, Feinstein also contracted encephalitis, which the Times described as a swelling of the brain that

can leave patients with lasting memory or language problems, sleep disorders, bouts of confusion, mood disorders, headaches and difficulties walking. Older patients tend to have the most trouble recovering. And even before this latest illness, Ms. Feinstein had already suffered substantial memory issues that had raised questions about her mental capacity.

The senator’s few visible and audible moments in the Capitol since she’s returned display the very language problems, bouts of confusion, and difficulty walking that encephalitis can inflict.

It’s increasingly clear that Feinstein should not still be serving as California’s senior senator. There’s more than one obstacle, however, to her stepping down. The first is her own apparent determination to continue in office. There have been stories in the press that speculate—which is not quite the same as reporting—that her determination is being bolstered by her San Francisco neighbor Nancy Pelosi (Pelosi has said as much; that’s not speculation), likely because Pelosi backs Rep. Adam Schiff to succeed Feinstein in the 2024 senatorial election and fears that California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint a Schiff rival, Rep. Barbara Lee, to the post if Feinstein resigns (that’s speculation, or at least somewhat informed inference). Newsom has long since pledged to appoint a Black woman to fill the seat if Feinstein steps down; if appointed, Lee, a Black woman who’s represented Oakland and Berkeley in the House since 1998, would make it difficult for her two declared 2024 rivals for the Senate seat, Schiff and Rep. Katie Porter, to stay in the race. Running to unseat the only Black woman in the Senate would be politically problematic, if not impossible.

For his part, Newsom, whose presidential ambitions are about as inconspicuous as a quasar, could well think (yes, this is speculation, too) that appointing Lee would get him cred among Black voters if and when he runs for president, and that a Senator Lee would be less of a rival to him than either Schiff or Porter. At 75, Lee is a good deal older than her two Senate opponents, and than Newsom himself.

Feinstein has positioned herself on the right flank of California Democrats as far back as 1990, when she attacked her opponent in that year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary for his opposition to the death penalty. She’s maintained that position during her three decades in the Senate, voting to authorize the war in Iraq and to support George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the rich. To not much apparent success, I’ve been calling her out for such stances since 1990, acknowledging that most of the time, she’s voted with the Democrats’ party-line program. In 2017 and ’18, I wrote several articles arguing that her running for re-election to a six-year term at age 85 was, for multiple reasons, the wrong choice.

Now, however, it’s a number of Feinstein’s longtime supporters—understandably pained to see her condition and persuaded that the job demands more of her than she has to give—who are beginning to say she should go, too. Act III, after all, is only the middle of Lear. Let’s hope this story doesn’t devolve into a full-blown five-act tragedy.

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