(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) With the impending retirement of Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Democrats revealed that they planned to bypass 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Instead, they elected the second-most senior Democratic member of the Senate Patty Murray, D-Wash. according to Business Insider.
Though largely ceremonial, the position is third in line to become President, after the vice president and speaker of The House. The office has automatically gone to the longest-serving senator of the majority party since the 1940s, according to the Washington Post.
Feinstein reportedly had declined the job already, but as the elections for the upcoming term were unfolding, she appeared to have forgotten that she had done so:
“You were asked about it over the break, and you put out a statement saying that you had no intention of running for it,” an aide said in front of a reporter from Insider.
“OK, well then, I guess it’s out,” Feinstein said.
Feinstein’s alleged intellectual decline was captured on the record again when she was overheard telling a staffer “I don’t even know what that is,” regarding a spending bill that the Senate was considering.
Feinstein’s behavior has been so unsettling to Democrats that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has speculated about replacing her with someone younger, such as Rep. Adam Schiff.
As serious as her intellectual decline appears to be, however, it is not the main reason Democrats would seek to limit the soon-to-be nonagenarian—after all, they elected the cognitively impaired Joe Biden as president.
The real problem with Feinstein may be that she is too much of a senator.
The Senate was supposed to be a small body of elder statesman deliberating together, to prevent America from succumbing to “the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” and enacting “intemperate and pernicious resolutions,” according to James Madison writing in “Federalist 62.”
Feinstein, despite her many problems, has retained the sort of old-guard collegiality with her colleagues across the aisle, much to the chagrin of the party’s far-left base.
She famously triggered leftists into fits of rage by complimenting Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and giving him a hug after the Oct. 20 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
A month later, Feinstein was forced to step down from her spot on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Feinstein also defended Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., after almost all Democratic senators—including so-called moderates like Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.—called for their expulsion over their efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election.
“They provide a kind of leadership,” she said.
“It’s an important place to have this kind of dialogue,” she continued. “It’s probably the highest-level dialogue that you get in an electoral body.”
