RapidcreekDianne Feinstein dies at 90
Imagine if she had mentored and sponsored a younger replacement in 2000 and then retired in 2010. Where would we be?
Now that Skeletor has died with no one obvious to replace her, the Judiciary Committee will probably grind to a halt when it comes to confirming judges.
She was a public servant that worked for a long time on your behalf.
California’s governor will name a replacement for the remainder of her term.
Democrats no longer have a clear majority in the Senate. This has all sorts of complications. I believe it will still take 60 votes to replace her in Judiciary which Republicans won’t give them. Probably the main reason she stuck around to begin with. Biden has to be careful with his nominees if he can get through any at all. Gawd help us if a SCOTUS member dies. The call for Menendez to step down will quiet a bit.
That last paragraph is all sorts of reasons why she should have retired 15 years ago (at 75!) When voters would have easily voted in her (possibly even hand picked!) protege.
We’re now left a mess because someone with an ego didn’t retire when they could have. Wait this is starting to sound familiar. Thankfully the consequences aren’t likely to be as dire this time.
15 years would mean that you would miss her vote for Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, plus Obamacare. We can play what if all day long.
CA has only elected democratic (vaguely to the left of the median Democrat, if fairly rank-and-file) senators since 1992. As long as she didn’t leave it to chance and die during her term (…) while she coincided with the honestly fairly moderate-but-still-republican Gov Schwarzenegger, she could have had a hand in picking her replacement.
As others (including myself) have noted, any Democrat-led SCOTUS nomination or major piece of Dem legislation would have passed more-or-less the same. I’d be curious if there was some analysis of where a particular Dem Senator from CA was a “swing vote”. Meanwhile now we’re in a vacancy and her missing vote definitely matters (again, thankfully likely with less impact than RBG’s).