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We should not hold a United States senator to a lower standard than that to which we hold all other Americans. We should expect that a senator would, at minimum, perform the basic duties of their job, like casting votes, rather than clench power at the public’s expense (after all, it’s not like they’re Supreme Court justices, who are apparently allowed to do whatever they want). But right now, we’re watching Dianne Feinstein, the 89-year-old California senator on medical leave since February, do the latter by refusing to step down.
California congressman Ro Khanna, one of the few Democrats loudly calling for Feinstein’s resignation, told me that her “stepping down from her position on the Judiciary Committee is a start, but the practical reality is that Republicans are already saying that they will stop Senator [Chuck] Schumer from filling her spot with another Democrat.” Khanna added, “With a Republican House blocking legislation, it is so critically important to confirm judges that will stand up against the ongoing assault on women’s reproductive rights. While I have a lot of respect for Senator Feinstein’s long career in public service, she is clearly unable to do her job and that puts millions of Americans at risk of losing fundamental rights.”
Feinstein has been a trailblazer for women in politics, with an impressive legacy of service spanning decades. In the late 1970s, as president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, Feinstein helped lead the city through the hideous murders of city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone (whom she would later succeed). She is the longest-serving female senator ever, having now spent three decades in the upper chamber. These days, however, Feinstein isn’t in Washington, but at home in San Francisco convalescing from shingles. “I intend to return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it’s safe for me to travel,” Feinstein said in a statement last week, though as of now, there’s been no immediate plan to do just that.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence Tuesday that Feinstein would return, though “it’s just a matter of when.” Pelosi has suggested sexism is at play in the calls to resign. “I don’t know what political agendas are at work that are going after Senator Feinstein in that way,” she said last week. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.” Sure, men like the late Strom Thurmond didn’t retire before turning 100, and current Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who won reelection in November at age 89, will be 95 when his term ends. But here’s the thing: “They” should have gone after men too, if the men weren’t able to do their jobs. (Grassley seems fine; Thurmond surely could have retired at, say, 92.) This is not about ageism or about feminism; this is about holding public servants to the same standards we hold everyone else to.
When someone is unable or unwilling to do their job, they resign—or can be expected to be fired. This is the way of life in America. It’s grim, but it’s what we do here. Imagine a world where we “hold” jobs for people who are likely never going to get back to them anyway. Your bus has no driver, your coffee place has no cashier, you go to your doctor appointment and the doctor is not there. It’s one of the harsh realities of life that we tend not to keep people in jobs when they can no longer do them.
Of course, public servants should be allowed to recover from health issues, and return, as Senator John Fetterman did this week following treatment for clinical depression. In the case of Feinstein, however, her current medical condition, and the uncertainty about when she could return, follows years of questions about her fitness to serve. Here’s how one unnamed lawmaker put it last year to the San Francisco Chronicle: “I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea. All of that is gone. She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that.”
But even two years prior, in 2020, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer told NPR’s All Things Considered: “Really, for the last Couple of years, I’ve been hearing that Dianne Feinstein has been struggling, particularly with short-term memory issues, so that her staff will brief her and then she’ll forget what she’s been told or that she’s been briefed at all.” This isn’t about age, this is about ability to do the job one was elected to do.
The problem with letting Feinstein take her time is that the math is not on Democrats’ side. Republicans have refused to let Feinstein sub someone else into her Judiciary Committee slot, with every day of her not serving being another day Democrats are not confirming federal judges. And right now, America is in the middle of a judicial crisis. We have a Supreme Court which is ruled by Republicans, of which three were installed by Donald Trump—the last being Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed shortly after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. (Democrats reportedly feared Feinstein playing a lead role in that confirmation hearing, for which she came under withering criticism after.) In June, those Trump-appointed justices overturned Roe, taking away a constitutional right women had for 50 years, the right to bodily autonomy. These right-wing justices have continued reshaping the country. According to NPR’s Nina Totenberg, it’s the most conservative Court in 90 years and conservatives have prevailed in “62% of the decisions.” These are not normal times. We are a country in the middle of a judicial emergency.
As Khanna said this past weekend on Fox News, California governor Gavin Newsom has the opportunity to appoint a caretaker to this Senate seat, thus not putting his finger on scale for the 2024 California Democratic senate primary, which already has representatives Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff, and Katie Porter vying for Feinstein’s seat. “This has nothing to do with the current race, because a caretaker would solve that,” he said. “This has to do with someone who is just not showing up.”
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