Democrats have behaved shamefully around Dianne Feinstein and Republicans are taking advantage

Democrats and the senior California senator refused to make tough decisions. Now Republicans are playing hardball

Senate Feinstein (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

When Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate during last year’s midterm elections, they hoped that the extra seat would allow them to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees at a faster clip than they had over the past two years.

For the past two years, a 50-50 Senate meant deadlocks on Mr Biden’s nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in the Senate Judiciary Committee. That required Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to take additional steps and for Vice President Kamala Harris to occasionally break ties.

The fact that Republicans had won the House of Representatives, effectively killing any future Democratic priorities, and the fact Republicans reshaped the federal judiciary during Donald Trump’s administration, made judicial confirmations all the more important for Democrats.

But the day after Senator Raphael Warnock secured his victory in Georgia, I asked Senator Dianne Feinstein of California what she thought of the extra Senate seat for Democrats. She responded “it's terrific ... but there's a danger in it as well. And that's being too aggressive.”

Progressives and Democrats as a whole have found Ms Feinstein incredibly frustrating in recent years. In 2018, at the age of 85, she chose to run for re-election even after her longtime colleague in the Senate Barbara Boxer had chosen to step aside in 2016, paving the way for Ms Harris’ election to the Senate, which gave way to her winning the vice presidency. And despite Ms Feinstein authoring of the 1994 Assault Weapons ban and exposing the United States’ use of torture in the War on Terror, she has always been much more conservative both in temperament and policy than one would expect from a Democrat from reliably liberal California.

Stories have also abounded about her allegedly declining mental acuity, which has led some to call for her resignation. Those calls have only grown louder since she contracted shingles and has been out of commission.

Her absence, combined with Senator John Fetterman’s as he underwent treatment for depression after he suffered a stroke last year, put Democrats’ hopes of turning the Senate into a judicial conveyor belt on ice.

Mr Fetterman’s return this week has only increased the pressure on Democrats to act on Ms Feinstein, who had already announced she would not seek re-election in 2024. But Democrats, from Nancy Pelosi, herself a barrier-breaking Californian woman in politics, to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, one of the Senate’s most outspoken feminists, have defended her, even implying sexism might be behind some of the calls to push her aside.

Of course, Democrats really have no recourse since only Ms Feinstein can choose to resign her Senate seat, even though she gave up her top seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after the 2020 election and opted not to become Senate President Pro Tempore.

But instead, she and Democrats have tried to be too clever by half and get Ms Feinstein to temporarily resign her seat. This is a blatantly shameless ploy by Democrats who refuse to make hard decisions: they do not want to punish Ms Feinstein or force her to finally step aside, but they still want their judges.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans have thumbed their nose at this ploy. Everyone from hardline conservatives like Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee to members who regularly make deals with Democrats like John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have rejected the plan.

Of course, Republicans don’t necessarily care about the request being “unprecedented,” as much as they realise that they have a chance to stymie Mr Biden’s judicial nominees, even if they are in the minority. This is the same party that blocked Merrick Garland on the premise that the Senate should not vote on a Supreme Court justice before a presidential election and then reversed course to confirm Amy Coney Barrett shortly before the 2020 election.

The GOP’s cynicism knows no bounds. But Democrats should have expected this and realised that their decision to prop up Ms Feinstein would have horrific consquences for their agenda.