The death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein places Gov. Gavin Newsom under intense pressure to quickly name a replacement as a bitterly divided Congress votes on a spending plan in the coming hours to avert a government shutdown.
Newsom had hoped to avoid the politically charged decision of selecting a second senator. But he will need to move swiftly as a budget standoff has the government on the verge of shutting down, and Senate Democrats could need every vote. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) affirmed on Friday that the fast-moving political situation creates an imperative for Newsom to make a difficult decision quickly.
“He, you know, wants to be respectful and not name somebody while folks are still grappling with their grief,” Kaine said, but “we cannot afford to be one down. We really can’t.”
The timing of Feinstein’s death — four months before a primary but more than a year before the end of her term — complicates this election cycle. Staff at the California secretary of state’s office was huddling early Friday morning to determine the timelines that would govern an appointment or a possible special election.
If I were placing a bet, it would be on Shirley Weber, a black woman who Newsom appointed to be SoS when he named Alex Padilla to the US Senate. She’s a former state legislator, and at age 75 a 15 month appointment to the US Senate would be a fine way to cap off her political career, while making good on Newsom’s promise to name a black woman and to appointment a “caretaker” who wouldn’t run for the post.
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Let’s not pretend that anyone over the age of 70 immediately becomes mentally incompetent. That’s not only ridiculous it’s insulting. These things should be taken on a Case by case basis.
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Plenty of people over 70 still have cognitive function. Plenty of people over 70 benefit from decades of experience and relationship-building. Plenty of people over 70 make decisions for the benefit of later generations, either via a sense of altruism or to help their grandkids. Just because someone’s old doesn’t mean they’re shitty.
I’m all for running out the shitty old people, just like I’m for running out the shitty young people. But let’s not discount people for their age, either direction.
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The issue is they for the most part have no idea what technology is and thus how to regulate it. They’ve also grown in a completely different political landscape than what people want to see going forward and so it’s just fucking tiring. While I agree they can still do “fine”, people are fucking sick of that.
Correct. We need a lot fewer people like this in public office.
🤣 I remeber this Republican lunatic. Didn’t he also bring a snowball into Congress to disprove global warming?
Most of the shitty old people in congress started out as shitty young people in congress.
Most of the good old people in congress started out as good young people.
A good young or middle aged person is better in congress than a good elderly person, but a good elderly person is way, way better than a shitty young person.
But also let’s not assume they are too. Competency tests exist.
Let’s not pretend that anyone over the age of 70 immediately becomes mentally incompetent. That’s not only ridiculous it’s insulting. These things should be taken on a Case by case basis.
It’s also Ageist.
Ageism is wonderful. Maybe we should just shoot everyone over 30?
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Lol, the idea that age is the issue there and not class is laughable.
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Ain’t no old poor senators.
If we’re going to do something like that can we go full Logan’s Run and have a Carousel and orgies and everything?
The children in this thread don’t know what Logan’s run is. 😆
Yeah, I think their version was called ‘The island’, which was a decent movie, but definitely no Logan’s Run.
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Ageism is stupid, but recognizing the limits and needs of the upper limits of age related physiology isn’t ageism.
We don’t let 5 year olds run the country for the same reasons we shouldn’t let 90 year olds. Is there an occasional exception that might actually make a decent leader? Absolutely! …and frankly the 5 year old comparison stands there too - I’d take most 5 year olds over most of the current assholes running the world. But I digress - we shouldn’t run shit like age barriers on the possibility of exceptions.
Another angle I don’t see people talking about much here is that making someone work literally all the way to the grave, is fucking cruel. I get that these folks are power hungry wastes of oxygen who want to just occupy what would otherwise be useful space for as long as possible, but again, exception not rule.
Society has already decided on a general retirement age. Social Security age eligibility should be the cut off for all elected positions.
Man, you really want to raise the social security age that badly?
As long as someone has their cognizant abilities and is capable of doing the job and they want to do the job they should be able to do the job.
We as voters should be voting them out of the office if we don’t like the job they’re doing, or even if we feel they’re out of touch with their constituency, but we shouldn’t be excluding them from taking the job just because of their age.
I’m personally cool with that, but only if we have a system to process them as exceptions. Mental wellness checks, verification that they actually understand the things they’re legislating - like iirc there was a recent story with a law maker who was handling some of Google’s recent shenanigans, but let slip that didn’t know what a browser is. He didn’t have any mental disease that I’m aware of, he just didn’t grow up around tech and found himself legislating on something he had zero understanding of as a product of his age.
We can’t just rely on voters to vote them out - name recognition is and will continue to be a helluva drug. Also not every office is decided by voters.
We need to handle the age problem in politics. It doesn’t have to be some heavy-handed “just kick out all the 65+ers!” shit, but our policy now is to just wait until they die, which is equally unacceptable.
Totally and completely agree with your take.
Ageism IS wonderful.
age·ism /ˈājˌiz(ə)m/ noun prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age.
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Ageism IS wonderful. Stop defending the fucking geritocracy.
age·ism /ˈājˌiz(ə)m/ noun prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age.
So you agree that five-year-olds should own guns and drive cars
Your logic train blew past the station it was supposed to stop at.
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Here’s news: the leftist “anti-agism” crusade is a super weak position to be taking
So pushing back against prejudice and/or discrimination is a “leftist ‘anti-ageism’ crusade”? Really?
Prejudice and/or discrimination of ANY kind should not be allowed in a healthy society, and is definitely NOT a “super weak position to be taking”.
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Perfect. It’s not overthinking it, while keeping a promise, and not rebuffing anyone who wants to or is already running for the seat. I hope he doesn’t fuck this up.
And then she stays for next 30+ years…
I’m joking, that sounds reasonable and would also fit his statement that he won’t pick up either of the running candidate to not tip the scale and to not tip it would have to be somebody who won’t run next year. So as long as she guarantees that she won’t run, then indeed she sounds like a great choice.
love it
Remember, as awful as she was, there are 49 Republican senators who are infinitely worse.
They are both systemic issues, and ranking them by “bad” is not particularly important. Ranking them by changeable is. Which is to say, either promote acceleration or term limits.
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The context is very relevant, because while party infighting is great, it’s absolutely vital to keep some perspective.
Feinstein was awful, but not let-trump-get-away-with-sedition awful.
This is why 90-year olds shouldn’t be allowed to run for political office. You know they can die at any moment and it’s not going to be a convenient time.
Same is true of lifetime Supreme Court appointments. Look at what Ginsburg’s poorly timed death did. Her legacy is permanently tarnished by allowing Trump of all people appoint her replacement.
Ginsburg no-doubt thought that Hillary Clinton would be there to do that, but how’d that work out? Roe vs Wade got overturned. Disgusting.
She should have retired before Obama left office.
Yes, but also they’d have blocked any nomination because of the republican-senate rule that you can’t hold hearings on a nomination during a Democrat administration.
She should have retired the moment he was re-elected; there would have been no way for the Republicans to have justified delaying hearings.
“He, you know, wants to be respectful and not name somebody while folks are still grappling with their grief,”
What a load of crap.
She was 90, everyone knew this was coming, arguably she’d already left the building a while ago, and this is politics not a private family gathering.
They’re delaying because they want to be seen as respectful. It’s optics. That’s all.
They’re delaying because they want to be seen as respectful. It’s optics. That’s all.
You realize they all knew each other quite well, they were all in the same inner circles, right?
That maybe, just maybe, they’re actual human beings and they actually do want to pay respect?
“Dear passengers, we apologize for the delay, but one of our pilots pilot died last week, we all knew them quite well, and we feel really bad about it, so out of respect we’ll delay hiring a replacement and cancel the hundred flights they would otherwise have flown over the coming week.”
“Dear passengers, we apologize for the delay, but one of our pilots pilot died last week, we all knew them quite well, and we feel really bad about it, so out of respect we’ll delay hiring a replacement and cancel the hundred flights they would otherwise have flown over the coming week.”
Just repeating myself at this point, but here goes, for what it’s worth…
Newsom has time. Her committee is not in session right now, as Congress/House is busy grappling with the last minute voting before the government shuts down, and in the Senate the VP can override any tie by voting herself.
Give me a fucking break, Newsom was not her BFF. This is bigger than their feelings. We can’t afford to be down one senator.
If he’s really too emotional to make this decision then he should resign because he’s incapable of doing the job.
Newsom was not her BFF.
There’s a range of friendship between not knowing someone, and being BFFs.
If he’s really too emotional to make this decision then he should resign because he’s incapable of doing the job.
Always with the instant extremist opinion / options with you people.
Newsom has time. Her committee is not in session right now, as Congress/House is busy grappling with the last minute voting before the government shuts down, and in the Senate the VP can override any tie by voting herself.
How about he just wants to show some respect, to give people a moment to grieve. She was a big deal in California and San Francisco, even if you personally didn’t like her.
What a pessimistic take. We should be expecting this kind of behavior from our politicians, not denigrating or whenever we see it.
This is how I see it, if you needed heart surgery but the surgeon died and the chief decided not to hire a new heart surgeon until everyone’s fee fee feels got better and you died would you applaud the chief for being respectful? Fuck no and I’m sorry but she has been basically dead for at least a year and the second she was pronounced dead they should have been swearing in a replacement.
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Many hospitals only have one surgeon for certain parts, a general surgeon probably can’t operate for complex heart surgery. And her not being replaced does stop the senate, without her the Democrats at best can break even on votes and with senama and mamchin willing to break party lines the republicans could do a lot of damage. Her holding power until she had to die makes her contribution null to me. I don’t have empathy for power hungry monsters. I would have if she left two elections ago. Thinking about it with mamchin and senima they could pass a budget that would end support of Ukraine which would kill thousands and all because this “human” wanted to stay in her position.
She deserves as much empathy as she offered up when she gave the middle finger to a classroom full of children asking to not be sentenced to cook to death.
Idk if she had redeeming qualities at some point in her life, but she cast those aside in order to cling to power, and eventually died a monster.
She doesn’t get bonus points for being blue, human or dead - her actions are what matters, and based on those, the world became a slightly better place when she passed.
I’ll sing the exact same song when Moscow Mitch finally bites the dust, and every other power-hungry obstructionist squatting in what could otherwise be a useful office.
What about empathy for all the people who will suffer because the Republicans get their way into the Senate? Why the fuck does Feinstein matter more than them?
If he didn’t have a shortisg ready to go he shouldn’t be governor. Her death was not an unforseen event.
He does have a short list. A very short one. He has stated that he will appoint a black woman. But he’s been back peddling on that, much to the chagrin of the only black woman running for the seat, congresswoman Barbara Lee.
How long is “temporary” when the previous person worked until they died at 90 years old?
Im sure its until the election, then they need to actually be elected.
The governor appoints to a vacancy in California.
Until an election, yeah.
The previous person wasn’t appointed by the governor.
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He has had ample time to see this coming and make up his mind.
Bids must still be coming in.
