If you’re feeling deprived of irony, watch the spectacle of the vicious attacks on Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
It’s a priceless example of the left eating its own and demonstrates how nasty it is — even when a fellow Democrat is on the menu.
President Biden should also pay special attention.
The merciless effort to drive the ailing Feinstein out of office and into retirement could prove to be a dry run for a demand that an aged, declining Biden also get out of the way during a second term.
Feinstein, 89, has been absent from the Senate since mid-February and was later diagnosed with shingles and hospitalized in California.
When she was released in early March, aides promised she would be back in Washington within weeks.
Citing “complications,” they now offer no timetable for the return of Feinstein, who has been in the Senate for 30 years.
Shingles is not her only problem or even the biggest one to her tormentors.
Her original sin was to praise and hug GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham in October of 2020 after the final Judiciary Committee hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.
The left reacted with wild outrage and calls for her to quit the committee came instantly from activists as well as from formerly sensible scholars Norman Ornstein and Harvard’s Laurence Tribe.
Although Feinstein voted against Barrett’s confirmation, the rabble still wanted blood and The New Yorker was soon painting a picture of a senator losing her marbles.
The magazine reported that Democratic colleagues were trying to convince her to step down after “concerning” episodes, including in a hearing where she asked a witness the same question twice.
Later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that associates said the senator’s memory was fading and that she was having trouble recognizing colleagues and following conversations.
She’ll quit . . . in 2024
Despite the pressure and anonymous slurs, Feinstein refused to quit the committee, her only concession being a decision last February not to seek re-election in 2024.
That briefly quieted the hunger for her head, but her continued absence has reignited calls for her to retire.
Although losing her vote in the narrowly divided Senate has not caused major problems on legislation for Dems, her absence from the Judiciary Committee is a different matter.
Without her, the committee has 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, and nominees need majority support to advance to the full Senate.
The tie has created a backlog of far-left judges nominated by Biden who can’t get out of the committee because no Republicans support them.
Under pressure, Feinstein offered a second concession on April 12, saying she would step aside from the committee temporarily so Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could name a replacement until she returns.
But that complicated move needs Republican support, and the GOP said no way.
As Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico, “Republicans are not going to break this precedent in order to bail out Sen. Schumer or the Biden administration’s most controversial nominees.”
So once again, the heat is on Feinstein and this time, radical Dems are demanding she resign from the Senate immediately so her seat can be filled.
If she does, California Gov. Gavin Newsom would appoint a far-left replacement to finish the term and presumably take her committee seat.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a member of the kooky House “Squad,” joined the growing chorus last week, tweeting that “with a far-right judiciary targeting our human rights, we are unable to confirm judges. Sen. Feinstein must step down.”
She was echoing Democratic calls from California Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota for the senator to retire.
“I don’t think that someone, no matter how remarkable their achievements, can be absent in their role, especially in this moment, where we need an active senator to get the president’s judges confirmed, when we need a senator from California pushing back against the transphobia, the gay phobia that we have been hearing, and that’s why I hope that we will have someone in that role,” Khanna told NPR.
The bums’ rush is not sitting well with other Dems, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suggested the attacks on her fellow Californian are sexist.
“I don’t know what political agendas are at work that are going after Senator Feinstein in that way,” she told reporters. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate that way.”
This bitter, uncivil war is relevant to Biden, who could face a similar push if he prevails in next year’s election.
Already there is wide speculation that his advancing age — he would turn 86 during a second term — and cognitive difficulties make it unlikely he could complete another full term.
A huge majority of voters — 68% in one poll — believe Biden is “too old for another term,” according to a Yahoo News/YouGov survey released in March.
Among Dems, 48% agreed his age is a problem, while only 34% disagreed.
And that poll was conducted before Biden’s bizarre re-election announcement last week in a three-minute video released while most Americans were sleeping!
One effort to justify his candidacy — beyond the possibility that Donald Trump will be his GOP opponent — is chatter that he might retire in the middle of a second term so that Vice President Kamala Harris could succeed him without the messy need to get elected in her own right.
The idea will resonate among the faithful because it could solve two problems: Biden’s age and Harris’ unpopularity among voters.
Having her take over mid-term also would let her run in 2028 as the incumbent.
The old Gray Lady
Naturally, the mainstream media eagerly jumped on the Biden bandwagon.
The New York Times was quick out of the box with a kid-gloves news story on Harris and an especially weird column by Thomas Friedman on the same day.
The news story made scarce mention of the record turnover among unhappy Harris aides and steered clear of the ridicule of her word-salad speeches.
Instead, it puffed her up as a trusted partner to Biden and a valuable campaigner and cited defenders who said — predictably — that criticism of her was sexist and racist.
It also claimed “she began to find her footing when she requested to be the administration’s leader on voting rights” and insisted “she has established herself as an advocate of police reform and as the standard-bearer for the administration on abortion rights.”
Who knew?
In his loopy piece, Friedman urged Biden, apparently seriously, to put Harris in charge of the “transition to the age of artificial intelligence.”
It would be fun to watch robots imitate her cackle.
Then he called for the Dems to be re-elected in a landslide, saying it would be a rebuke to “Trumpism and the politics of division.”
Without a shred of irony, he ridiculed Trump voters as the ones who are “haters and dividers.”
It’s going to be a long campaign.
Enjoy it while we can.
