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.
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.