Senator Dianne Feinstein appeared confused during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday. When asked to vote on a proposal, Feinstein began giving a lengthy speech instead of simply saying “aye” or “nay” as requested. The committee chair, Senator Patty Murray, had to repeatedly tell Feinstein “just say aye” and remind her that it was time for a vote, not speeches. After some delay, Feinstein finally cast her vote. A spokesperson said Feinstein was preoccupied and did not realize a vote had been called. The incident raises further concerns about Feinstein’s ability to serve at age 90, as she has made other recent mistakes and often relies on aides.
I said it for Mitch McConnell and I’ll say it for Feinstein too. People of advanced age whose mental faculties are becoming unreliable should not be in positions of great power. Step down, ma’am.
What happens when that person is in mid- to late-stage dementia and can no longer even make decisions for herself? How can she step down from office given she very obviously struggles to recognize she’s in office? How can she be removed from office involuntarily? Ordinary people in her situation would have a guardian by now
She has a caretaker who is acting as a guardian, but that care taker is Nancy Pelosi’s niece, and Pelosi want’s Feinstein to finish her term, so the seat can go to Adam Shiff, and not be filled by Governor Newsom, who has said he would appoint a Black woman to the seat, likely a progressive. Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee.
As a counterpoint, Feinstein is on the Judiciary committee, and if she were to retire mid-term, Democrats would lose that seat until the next election. So Republicans could then halt any judicial appointments.
As a counter counterpoint, Feinstein hasn’t been showing up to that committee, so it’s already happening.
Great info, thank you. Regarding your first point, I don’t think Schiff has a chance at that seat, but I guess we’ll see
I can easily see the DNC having Newsom put Shiff in the seat if Feinstein dies (she’s not going out any other way). Then Shiff would be the incumbent and the DNC and Dem voters usually go for the incumbent. Otherwise, they’ll end up with Porter. She makes waves and the boys at the top, they don’t like waves.
Newsom has already said that he wouldn’t appoint Shiff, he quite clearly said a black woman. And his best options there are progressive women, like Waters or Lee.
People shouldn’t be continuing to vote her into office.
She’s my senator. I vote against her in the past 3 primaries… but not enough people do. I keep voting for her, not because I want her, but because the republican alternative is still somehow worse.
Also I email her office a few times a year asking her to resign and let someone take her place.
Sounds like a job for Ranked Choice Voting
I’d vote for that.
She was last elected 5 years ago and has dramatically declined since then. I’m asking what can be done with her in office right now given her condition. Does CA have recalls?
There is no mechanism to recall a sitting senator, regardless of the state. The only process to remove a senator once in office is if the Senate themselves vote to remove her. (Which will never happen)
The Constitution lays this out quite clearly.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
The way it’s supposed to work is voters are supposed to notice and not reelect that person. But not enough voters participate in primaries and then when general elections roll around, we’re stuck electing the moderate dinosaur or the fascist. People need to stop asking Congress, a body conposed of grandparents, to outlaw grandparents (and therefore themselves) from running and start just not hiring them anymore. That way when you have an old person who still has their wits and does a good job, you can keep them around instead of it being all or nothing.
If only there was something her family could do. Oh well.
The Senate can remove members, it is in the constitution. I don’t know all the details, but it rarely happens.
Feinstein is in a bad way. Her daughter appears to be making a play for control of her trust money her husband left her by making spurious claims that the current trustees are not doing their fiduciary duty.
Archive version: https://archive.ph/h0DXg
The trustees attorneys response seems pretty clear cut, ESPECIALLY for a lawyer.
“My clients are perplexed by today’s filing. Richard Blum’s trust has never denied any disbursement to Senator Feinstein, let alone for medical expenses,” said Klein and Scholvinck’s attorney Steven P. Braccini in an email. Braccini noted that he had not been shown any evidence that Katherine Feinstein had power of attorney for her mother.
“Katherine [has not] made it clear, either in this filing or directly to my clients, why a sitting United States senator would require someone to have power of attorney over her. While my clients are deeply concerned, we all remain hopeful that this is simply a misunderstanding that can be quickly resolved, rather than a stepdaughter engaging in some kind of misguided attempt to gain control over trust assets to which she is not entitled.”
Damn. I hope the end of my days isn’t marked by such rancor.
This is why we vote. People keep voting them in and this is what happens.
The voters themselves are decrepit. Young people say voting won’t change things and bring their own prophecy true.
I know that it’s counter to statistics, but all of the most politically active people I have ever known have been the young people. Sure would be nice if my group of friends were more representative of the nation.
Sure. Young people make great activists. If only activism were counted. Old people quietly vote, consistently, many of them just dropping off an envelope at church or whatever. No big noise. No social media posts. And those votes are what gets counted.
Sometimes I think this is driven by basic stuff like the fact that young people move more often. I moved every year from age 18 to 25. That means my registration was usually behind, I didn’t always get my ballot in the mail, and I didn’t know where my polling place was necessarily. I’m old now and have been in the same residence for 10 years. My polling place is 2 doors down. I never miss a ballot. It’s really just that simple.
If 67 is the age of retirement in this country, then every single politician should be leading by example and retiring by then. I’m so sick of these geriatrics effectively ordering an entire lobster before they leave the restaurant and stick the younger folks with the bill.
I think that would just result in an even bigger push by right-wing politicians to move the retirement age even higher.
Better would be to tie it to the average life expectancy, updated with each census.
Why should we be punished if life expectancy goes up? Nobody should have to work until they’re too old to fully enjoy life.
That’s literally the opposite of what I said
That’s how I interpreted it too. Just because we’re living longer doesn’t mean our capacity for work is stretching further. My knees are already going out and I’m not near retirement age. I don’t want to be stuck working longer, hating every moment of it, knowing that all this means is now I won’t actually get to enjoy retirement
To play devil’s advocate, when Social Security was established (bringing with it the concept of a “retirement age”), the age of eligibility was deliberately set such that less than half of Americans would live long enough to draw on it. The clear expectation was that you would work until you couldn’t anymore.
That said, in an era when changes in life expectancy are starting to take on a K-shaped distribution and labor force participation has been on a long steady decline, tying governmental income support to age and employment duration is becoming distributionally regressive. I’d much rather have some sort of UBI system that everyone can benefit from.
Average life expectency goes up over time due to advancements in healthcare. Tying the retirement age to the average life expectency is effectively raising the retirement age.
It’s actually going down in the US. And again, I said tie the office age limits to life expectancy, not retirement age.
Can you please explain the difference between office age limits and retirement age?
Oh sure! So “retirement age” means the age at which the general population is eligible for certain benefits like tax-deferred account withdraw without penalty, social security benefits, Medicare, etc. Politicians generally go WAY past this age, well beyond cognitive decline, because they do not want to lose power.
Office age limits are (and should continue to be) unrelated to retirement age; otherwise it creates an incentive for politicians to RAISE the retirement age even further so that they can stay in office. Republicans already try often to increase the retirement age so that people will be stuck working until they die.
You’re probably right. And it’s not like any of them will ever vote for term limits. Our political system is a joke.
If we were serious about having an actual impact on climate change, we should be talking about how long it is actually fair or reasonable for any human being to live.
Are you suggesting we withhold medical treatment from people past a certain age?
No the retired need representation as well. You can’t right a wrong with another wrong. There needs to be a system in place for health evaluation and once you fail that without having a viable and reasonable path to improvement then you’re ineligible to be reelected. This needs multiple, separate, groups of people involved to reduce the risk of being used as a tool to oust undesirables. I can’t design such a system but I trust that people more well versed in how government works in the nitty gritty could design a suitable, acceptable system.
They need representation, they don’t need to be the whole representation. In fact, I’d say that 55+ people represent them quite well, since they are aiming to retire in the next decade anyways.
I mean, they can vote, and they are a big sector of the voting base, so even if the politicians are younger, there will be enough of them wanting to please the 67+ sector.
Let’s add some babies and teenagers while we’re at it. I don’t see them represented.
I have no problem with lowering the voting age to 16.
If they’re allowed to work, they should be allowed to vote.
But they can’t be a senator until they are almost twice that.
Babies and teenagers are represented by their parents…at least in theory.
Old people can just be considered represented by their adult children then.
Yeah, it’s not a great theory. Plenty of kids have bad/absent/dead parents. Plenty of old people have neglectful/nonexistent children.
Voting is supposed to do all this for us, it is the check/balance.
Problem is that more than half of Americans who should vote, don’t vote.
The problem is the 2-party system and the way they jam their thumbs onto the scale of what are supposed to be fair elections. Also, apathetic and ignorant voters across the spectrum. Not trying to “both sides” the issue, but these ghoulish geriatrics exist on both sides and consistently get re-elected.
You can easily make this argument towards teenagers as well, but they’re obviously illegible. Yet their rights and futures are being stripped away by the elderly.
There should absolutely be a hard cap and Senators should also be forced to use the services they provide (i.e. stop making millions stock trading) post retirement so it’s guaranteed to be beneficial.
I agree, I’m quick as anyone to joke about senility but to wholesale cut off our elders from decision making goes against all of social history.
All that knowledge and wisdom is valuable, even if it’s just “we tried this and it didn’t work”
Why do we need a law ? Didnt they, the people, vote for this old person or not ? I mean, if you are going to vote for a dry old person to represent you, that’s on you, unless there’s something I don’t understand about the Senate.
Something about old money, when only old people are on the menu there’s a systemic problem.
There needs to be a system in place for health evaluation
The unhealthy need representation as well!
No the retired need representation as well.
You should have known that.
They’re more than wealthy enough to engage in other activities and hobbies. They got rich in civil service, now it’s time for them to GTFO and make room for a younger,
progressiveleftist generation.More likely they’d just raise the retirement age then…
I’m way past sick of this fucking gerontocracy. The people determining the future should have a stake in it.
Kudos for using the word “gerontocracy”.
I am proud of my vocabulary, but I don’t know that I’m unique in my use of the word. Thanks, in any case!
They do, in the Democratic primary.
Where they keep voting for Feinstein.
The primary system is institutionalized insanity. This is why our choices devolve into Weekend at Bernie’s vs. a rapist Russian stooge.
Keep in mind that millions of people voluntarily vote for said rapist Russian stooge. The election system isn’t the only problem here.
Absolutely disgusting, completely disconnected from not only the nation but reality itself.
just another traitor standing in the way of progress
Just like RBG, too interested in personal power and ego, what else is new I guess
Edit: and naps, who doesn’t love a little power nap
I don’t think she has enough consistent cognitive functionality to know wtf is going on really.
She’s being propped up by Pelosi rather than being allowed to decompose horizontally with dignity.
It’s indicative of just how corrupt the political class is in every western country
Source re Pelosi?
Feinstein’s primary caregiver: Pelosi’s daughter
Pelosi is keeping Feinstein in place so she can swap her out for Schiff instead of having two other candidates who would be interim replacements that are more left wing and not (so much) under her control.
I believe her chief aide is one of Pelosi’s children, and people read into that manipulation by Nancy herself – usually along the lines of “she’s propping up Feinstein to keep out a progressive replacement!”
Feinstein belongs in a memory care ward rather than the Senate, but it doesn’t take nefarious scheming by everyone’s favorite bogeywoman to explain a cantankerous dementia patient refusing to accept their limitations and step away from something that they find comfortable and familiar.
I heard someone joke that if her staffers aren’t propping her up to keep their jobs but are actually delighting in seeing her frightened and confused in public, that person had new respect for the staffers. It’s an amusing way to reframe this tragedy.
I don’t think she’s interested in much besides naps at this point.
This is 1000% on her staff, family, and colleagues.
just retire already
While I think she’s missed too much, she’s quite old, and I think she should be replaced (though I’m not in her area so this is a moot point really), did anyone here actually watch the video?
This is a confusion in procedure and happens all the time.
Here is the video, go to 53:40 approximately:
Just fuckin stooooopp already JFC
People decry most “both sides” arguments for legitimate reasons. But this geriatric pandering takes place on both sides. It is absolutely disgusting to witness.
The GOP is dying for the left to pick up the mantle of putting age limits on serving in congress and the courts. It will help galvanize their base of older folks to vote. Don’t fall for it.
The GOP is dying for the left to:
- Protect women’s health
- Do something about health care in general
- Do something about gun violence
- Protect the working class
- Address any of the many systemic issues
It will galvanize their base. Don’t fall for it.
Baphomet help us all!
Term limits need to be implemented and a basic mental aptitude test should be required
Is this year’s Congress the new Black Adder series?
My guess is that most politicians just do what their staffers tell them. We’re just seeing behind the curtain with Feinstein.
Age limits and term limits are both bad ideas, but people who are in terminal mental decline should not be legislators, but it is up for their constituents to make that call.
Everything should have a term and age limit when it comes to running this country. No one over 70 has a real stake in the future until medicine has the average life expectancy up to 110. Most plans take years to negotiate and get moving on, with the results coming even later.
I don’t believe in restricting who can vote or who can run. Doesn’t matter how qualified or unqualified someone might be, if voters choose them, then then that is that.
The real issue here is that our voting systems are so broken and corrupted that the preference of voters is nearly never actually relevant to the outcome. Banning older people from running or putting in term limits won’t change that.
Term limits are particularly harmful because they exaggerate the “revolving door” problem, a legislator that know they don’t have to run again has no reason to listen to the public in their final term, instead their incentive is to line up another job for when it is over, such as with companies that are lobbying them.
Green representatives are also extremely prone to being manipulated by experienced lobbyists as well, and term limits on legislators will drastically increase the amount of green legislators.
It is a complicated topic. Cause a disability or age is not a good reason to limit access to something. It should never be a reason.
We need to improve healthcare, making our Environment accessible to everyone. And we need to ask ourself why do older people feel the need to stay in politics? Could it be that our society has a bad view on getting older so people are afraid to retire and admit that their capability has changed?
As much as I appreciate what she has accomplished in her career, it is long past time to step down. I agree with the poster advocating for an age limit for public servants.
