Senator Dianne Feinstein's career was filled with firsts, including first woman mayor of San Francisco and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
Strangely enough, it’s genuinely, actually the Republicans’ fault. The reason she couldn’t retire was that she was on the judiciary committee and in order to fill her vacant seat they needed 60 votes. Naturally if she resigned the Republicans would have refused to put literally anyone in that seat so judicial confirmations would have been blocked until the next election. Now that she’s dead we’re in that situation anyway, but she refused to retire in order to try and make it to the next election so the Republicans couldn’t do that. Five years ago she was in reasonable health so there was no reason not to run for reelection. When health troubles hit she planned the only exit available that wouldn’t hurt the county.
Strangely enough, it’s genuinely, actually the Republicans’ fault. The reason she couldn’t retire was that she was on the judiciary committee and in order to fill her vacant seat they needed 60 votes. Naturally if she resigned the Republicans would have refused to put literally anyone in that seat so judicial confirmations would have been blocked until the next election. Now that she’s dead we’re in that situation anyway, but she refused to retire in order to try and make it to the next election so the Republicans couldn’t do that. Five years ago she was in reasonable health so there was no reason not to run for reelection. When health troubles hit she planned the only exit available that wouldn’t hurt the county.
Republicans sure don’t sound like they’re about to block Democrats from filling Dianne Feinstein’s Judiciary Committee seat
It’ll be interesting that in a year from now we look back and see if this was true or not.