Many years ago, I remember she supported a similar bill around limiting encryption. Around six months later, it was reported some government agency was spying on senators' emails, and she wasn't happy. I don't think she made the connection between the two, or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data.
I met her at an SVLG dinner and had a discussion about encryption; it became instantly clear she doesn’t know what a computer is past that it is a TV that takes input, and that encryption is just “evil people wanting to do evil things.”
There was no reasoning with her either, frankly because she is well-aged, and thus thinks herself “wise” with very little left to learn.
It was honestly infuriating.
[edit] In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, I promise I’m not. I went back to look at my texts to my now-wife after that meeting, and I was livid and extremely disappointed. She was at a table of, at the time, a dozen or so cybersecurity experts from industry and academia, and instead of listening to (or rather, hearing) what they had to say, she pushed forward an agenda of “trying to stop evil” while “protecting the children” and “thanking us for our concerns,” all while explaining that she understands encryption and knows how important it is, but that it’s more important for the military to have it and normal people don’t really need it as much. After all, it’s not like we don’t talk to other people in coffee shops where people can overhear and stuff.
The first is 2013, right after Snowden leaked the presidential surveillance program. These are our elected officials who oversaw the program. They knew of its existence before the leak.
The second is 2017, right after the Supreme Court ruled the presidential surveillance program was illegal (one justice calling it "Orwellian" in their comments).
Listen to these people in 2013 defend their actions and, in 2017, try to defend themselves and justify their actions. Not only is it clear that they don't think they've done anything wrong, at least one of these people thought they had a viable chance at running for president after this.
We the people trusted them to keep secrets responsibly. We trusted them to oversee programs that citizens could not hold accountable. They utterly failed and, if they had their way, would have continued failing in their responsibility. From watching these hearings I get the distinct feeling that these elected officials consider the problem to be the leak, not that someone had to utterly ruin their own life in order to expose this group's crimes.
The only person who demonstrated they may be fit for their position is Sn. Wyden. Listen closely to Wyden's statement. He is unable to disclose secrets, but he very clearly (and strongly) suggests that the U.S. clandestine groups are harvesting geolocation data without warrants in mass under these programs.
I met her in 2003, along with her aides at a party I was invited to (in a fluke) in Palm Springs.
She was a moron then, and now she's a senile moron. Her aides, who ended up hanging out with me all weekend, were a perfect illustration of the donor class kids who weren't that smart but got into ivy League schools by legacy admissions. Zero intellectual curiosity, super aware of social status, everything they said seemed preplanned and inauthentic.... Just gross.
I covered that point (or thought I did!) with the second sentence in my GP comment. The issue is what it does to us as a community. That's significant.
Comment in question concerned what the poster personally experienced, which clearly wasn't a pleasant/positive one. If you want to demand he prove he met Feinstein in person, well, that's certainly within your power as moderator and owner of this space.
But as far as what he owes to the community, I think he doesn't have to explain anything of his experience interacting with someone. He interacted with Feinstein, his takeaway was she is a "senile moron". I for one won't fault him for that, but you obviously have a different take and that's fine.
As an aside, the fact you flagged my comment as well implies very dark things. It is perhaps better I take my leave because I have no interest in enabling such matters. Though it does sadden me, in a deeply ironic way, that an American entity subscribes to such things. People have died to protect the right to speak ill of those in power.
Here, I rewrote the parent comment with a set of substantive points rather than namecalling. Same message, but much more constructive in nature.
“I met her in 2003, along with her aides at a party I was invited to (in a fluke) in Palm Springs.
She was ignorant of tech and science then, and now she's the same but more senile (as happens with age). Her aides, who ended up hanging out with me all weekend, were a perfect illustration of the classic trope of donor class kids who weren't that smart but got into ivy League schools by legacy admissions. Zero intellectual curiosity, super aware of social status, everything they said seemed preplanned and inauthentic.... Just left me feeling gross.”
I don’t think ‘dang would have had an issue with that wording. It doesn’t take much to be substantive rather than resorting to ad hominems; the latter is just easier.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what "flagged" means, then. I've always understood that as an indicator for a comment that you or another moderator found objectional, especially since flagged posts usually get hidden from further viewing. Learn something new everyday, as they say.
Flagging is an ability HN users get after attaining a certain level of karma; flagged posts are generally flagged as such by said users, not by the mods.
That he’s not a free speech absolutist? big deal, nobody is no platform is, thats the expected default behavior everywhere you go and there is zero reason why HN would be different. I’m not even going to go into how this is a private platform with clearly stated rules for you because it doesn't even matter, just take the L
None of those are implied. What I posted was bog-standard HN moderation. You could replace the name Feinstein with any other, or her party or politics with any other, and I'd have posted the same moderation response.
I'm not sure what you're finding hard to understand about HN having a guideline that asks people not to call names or do flamewar.
I don't have any complications with HN guidelines, but I do with the way they are enforced.
I see plenty of posts that call people, both ordinary and public figures, "names" that go unflagged and unmoderated. I see plenty of meme posts that don't get flagged and moderated. I see political threads and subthreads all the time despite politics strictly being off-limits per guidelines.
In fairness to you, you've never claimed HN is a free speech platform so I am perfectly fine with you publishing submitted threads and comments as you see fit. I'd even die, figuratively speaking, to protect your right to those freedoms of expression and association, and I would hope you will reciprocate the sentiment as a fellow American.
However, the reality is the HN guidelines are not enforced equally, fairly, and objectively, so you will have to excuse me for rolling my eyes at all the inevitable noise that will create (including mine). We can get away with calling Trump, Gates, and Jobs among others names but not Feinstein? Please. I realize HN is short on manpower, but that is not an excuse.
This very thread is a precise example of why moderation is hard and necessary. I read the whole thing and it has zero interesting substance, and does not do anything to satisfy curiosity, which is largely the point of HN.
I’d recommend reading the guidelines one more time.
The very fact this thread (it's political in nature) wasn't expunged at first sight is indication that moderation is dealt out unequally, unfairly, and unobjectively.
I reiterate: I am fine with dang enforcing his beliefs upon this publication as it is his property and he never so much as implied to support free speech. From the outset we deliberate and have our thoughts published here at his pleasure.
However, seeing as he has set out rules ("guidelines") he has an obligation to enforce them equally, fairly, and objectively.
I don't necessarily have a problem with him prohibiting insults, if that's his policy here then it is what it is because this is his publication space. But if he is defending Feinstein or any other particular individual specifically, that I do have a problem with and if such is made clear I will take my leave because I have no interest in enabling such matters.
You're drawing conclusions based on what you've happened to notice. That's a skewed sample because people notice the cases that they dislike [1]. Users with opposite politics to yours draw opposite conclusions. If you don't believe me, see the examples at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. Here are a few more recent tidbits (links available upon request!):
"an extremely conservative place", "dang, who always hands out the bans to one side", "HackerNews Right-wing mods", "HN is surprisingly conservative", "dang, enabler of alt-right QAnon horseshit", "most of people on HN are ancap or fascists", "hacker news only cares about free speech when it can be used to dunk on the left", "zero left wing chatter. instant ban by this fash site", "I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN", "This place is a toilet of reactionary racists", "a white supremacist community", "generally nazi-sympathetic sociopaths", "fine with racist posts, right-wing, bigoted", "libertarian echo chamber", "a community full of some pretty extreme opinions, generally right-wing and regressive", "always been very right wing ... always filled with racist, sexist, right wing political abuse", "all of the libertarian BS here on HN", "many comments on HN of late have tilted radical right-wing", "filled with self obsessed tech bros who pretend they are libertarian but are actually just racists", "hn leans extremely conservative", "intolerable shithole full of pretend libertarians (e.g. racist white power sorts)", "it's capital that aligns to fascism", "pretty heavily Libertarian", "HN has always been a libertarian hell site", "pure, unadulterated, proto-fascist garbage for narcissistic jerks", "overwhelmingly hardcore libertarian forum", "right wing talking points", "gathering ground for aggrieved conservatives in tech", "HN is a weird place. Feels like the loudest political voices are alt-right-adjacent", "I knew HN was right wing but seriously guys?", "Yes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.", "A lot of fascists in this thread, to no one's surprise.", "a forum skewed libertarian techbros", "Literally anything left-of-right-of-centre immediately gets flagged (if not outright banned by the mods)", "moderation choices by dang (e.g. his pernicious need to pander to the anti-science, far-right crowd)"
(Before anyone goes "oho! that's because you are rightwing fascist enablers" - I've pasted these examples because the current complaint is that we're secret Feinsteinians. If the claim were the other way around I'd paste an opposite list. There's an endless supply, from all angles.)
Yes, there are plenty of cases where commenters break the rules and we don't do anything—but you're wrong to conclude that that's because we secretly agree with them. It's simply because there's far too much content for us to read it all. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [2]. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
This attitude isn't a good look for the owners of this private platform and I don't think they'd agree with your perspective nor do most of the users. Food for thought.
My my, the users don't matter. Who does? Maybe only yieldcrv matters?
The owners have left this platform and mostly hang out on twitter.
> the moderations actions in their properties are not a mystery or unexpected
Something we could agree on until relatively recently, there seems to be a notable change in direction and a growing dissatisfaction online and offline amongst actual entrepreneurs (the sort that apply to ycombinator) and investors. If those users don't matter and start leaving what is this site actually for my friend?
That’s interesting because we’ve all had the same two decades to learn new things
and I know many people her age that have
there’s people that make excuses for it and there’s people that don’t. I don’t buy “brain plasticity”, my observation is that it comes down to who your peers are, what social consequences you have
Even among the dinosaurs in the US Senate, Feinstein stands alone in her striking ability to be willfully ignorant about anything developed after the steam locomotive.
The country would be an objectively better place if both the House and Senate had a mandatory retirement age.
Why do these people continue to be re-elected at all?
Surely there's some other (D) that could have replaced Feinstein a decade ago - but California keeps re-electing her? There's near unanimous agreement she "lost it" long ago - yet here she still is.
A mandatory retirement age is great and all... but maybe we need to figure out why people vote for someone nearly nobody wants in the first place. Just the "safe" vote? That can't be all of the story...
I think it's a combination of risk aversion and the cost of acquiring information.
Most people don't do extensive (or any) research before voting. They choose a candidate based on party affiliation or the information on TV. So for that majority of people, they will vote for a candidate whether or not the candidate is of sound mind. They assume other people have done the due diligence.
On the other hand, you have the parties themselves. The Democratic Party would rather have a senile Democrat than a non-senile Republican. And the Democratic Party is itself strongly influenced by other Democrat politicians who may even appreciate a senile coworker since that coworker can be more easily manipulated. So they have no incentive to risk losing that by suggesting or supporting a different Democratic candidate.
That in turn means new Democrat candidates will struggle to get the amount of support or funding which is necessary to publicize oneself enough that the complacent members of the public mentioned earlier could vote for them.
Only 24% of registered voters in California are Republican, so the election hinges on the Democratic primary. You don't get to a position in a political party where you can realistically run for and potentially win a US Senate seat by making a habit of attacking people in your own party. Those that do get ostracized long before they have that kind of juice, and the people who could potentially do it are not likely to risk the entire thing on running now when they could more safely run in another term or two, especially if they've already got a comfortable elected position.
So the answer on the inside is that nobody willing to run against her has the power to, and nobody with the power to is willing. On the outside, it's people who don't care who is running, they only care about the letter next to the name, so would never vote for a Republican or an Independent.
Is this true, or are these just benefits of someone who has been in the Senate for 30 years having good working relationships with 70 other Senators, and the branch new Senator being lucky to know one or two?
Put another way, what rules of the Senate benefit length of service over anything else?
I don't personally think age is really the problem - mental (and to some extent, physical) abilities are, however.
There's the good 80 years old, and then there's the bad 80 years old. We all know it when we see it... and we're watching it in real time in multiple places within our federal government right now.
We, as a country, are about to face this very same question again, as President Biden is expected to announce his re-election bid shortly. Are we OK with that as a country, given his obvious decline in the past few years? Objectively, and without red or blue coloring, he's not the Joe Biden of 2008.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't want people born before Hitler rose to power to be in the government at all. I don't care how sharp you are and I don't care how progressive or conservative you are.
If you're old enough to have had strong opinions about LBJ when he was in office, your time has passed and we really don't need you in the Senate, or the White House, or anywhere else in government making decisions that will have impacts decades after you're gone.
There's this idea that someone shouldn't run against an incumbent. It goes against both parties. The boomer generation was a large group, they often see the world in a more common way (that world of the 50s and early 60s?), they still want to see themselves as being in power, even as they are all getting close to age 80 (made a typo here originally, I put 60 instead of 80). They don't want to give up. That's why these elderly politicians stay in power.
I think the reasoning behind not having an age cap in Congress is that if the people want to elect someone who is old, they should be able to do so. The ultimate check in a democratic society is the people, and like a different commenter said, it's strange that the voters of California continue to vote for Feinstein.
Presumably they vote for her because she is a democrat and the other viable candidate, a republican, is completely unpalatable to them. The problem is internal party politics that appear to have an unwritten rule of re-running the same candidate until they lose.
California has had a jungle primary for a bit now, and there has been at least one general election that pitted Feinstein against a Democrat in the general election. As I mentioned elsewhere, the most common argument I got from Democrats around me for voting for her was seniority, for committee appointments and such.
Seems odd to knowingly choose a candidate that will work to make the lives of Americans worse solely to keep seniority. In fact, doing so seems like you would be empowering a terrible person beyond a normal terrible person, thus ensuring the lives of Americans are that much worse.
I mean, I don't think they believe she is "work[ing] to make the lives of Americans worse", even if they think the other candidate might be better. They agree with a lot of her positions. Heck, I agree with a lot of her positions, I just disagree with too many important ones.
And her health has been failing recently, which has been a big problem for operations in the Senate (judicial appointments have stalled as there is now no party majority on the judiciary committee). She claims she will still serve the rest of her term, but I think there's a decent chance she'll eventually see the light and step down within the next few months. (Though this might just be wishful thinking on my part.)
The downside there is that Gov. Newsom then gets to appoint someone to serve the rest of her term, and then will have the incumbent advantage in 2024, even if they turn out to be not that great. But I think that's probably preferable to the current situation.
This is why we need more tech people to get into politics. And I'm not thinking billionaire ceos. I'm talking about devs, qa, pm, people that did actual work.
The problem is that politics has become a career. If you want to get elected to anything beyond a low-level local position, you need to put years of your life into it, and decades if you want a national political role with any clout. That essentially means that these tech people won't have time for a career in tech anymore. Maybe some would find that interesting or desirable, but I'd bet most would not.
Absolutely disgusting that people like this are responsible for making legislative decisions about technology. Her retirement in 2024 can't come soon enough. Though with her failing health, her retirement actually may come soon enough.
We really need term limits for Congresspeople. I hesitate to suggest age limits, as one's ability and aptitude for governing later in life depends on many factors, but that may be appropriate as well.
In the UK, we will have ministers say 'We need to force the evil big tech companies to break encryption so terrorists and perverts can be caught' and the next week they'll warn of the dangers of Russia hacking into vital infrastructure, and the urgent need for strong cybersecurity strategies.
Clinton's emails, that are rightfully a matter of public record (unless they were classified, then she should've went to jail) get leaked, and it's the end of the world and calls the election into doubt.
The same people want to read the communications of private citizens.
They aren't even pretending that there isn't a double standard anymore.
She has been on medical leave since February, which makes me wonder in what capacity she co-sponsored this bill... can she do that from her nursing home?
Having interned long long ago, most "co-authorships/sponsorships" are merely tokens added to a bill to make it seem more impressive.
Rarely, if ever, does a bill sponsor have much to do with the bill. At least in my experience. It was a game to see who we could round up for the bill, and then a political game about who would look better or bring a stronger base.
Right, I didn't have any expectation that she personally drafted the text of section 4 or debated the finer details prior to its introduction, or sought out expert testimony, or even read all 53 pages, or anything like that.
I was more curious over whether the "rounding up" and adding her to the list involved her being present or questioned in any capacity, or whether she just had a standing guideline that she wanted to be listed as a co-sponsor on any Judiciary Committee bills also sponsored by Durbin and Graham or something like that.
Between Feinstein, Biden, and Fetterman it's starting to look like an annual cognitive test may need to become a qualification for Federal government office. The two party system and the rigging of primaries leaves us with electing braindead meat puppets as the lesser of two evils. What a sad state of affairs.
> or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data
I know we shouldn't assume malice when incompetence explains things, but I genuinely do think a lot of people who run governments do actually think they should not be affected by the same rules they want to apply to everyone else.
It's a base-level "us and them" viewpoint. The ruling class would never stand to live under the same constraints they place everyone else. That is true for just about every nation that has ever existed, at some point.
Because she's not a Republican, and competitive primaries for long-time incumbents are often political suicide for the challenger. Voters have a poor set of choices and select the least bad.
I honestly think it’s mostly that voters simply don’t know.
She’s a democrat, but runs against democrats (usually), and wins largely because she’s been there forever and, tbh, California is a pretty spectacular place to live.
Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
(Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
> Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
A senator represents the state's views within the federal government, and has next to nothing to do with internal policies within the state.
Electing Feinstein or some other person has effectively little-to-no impact on a California citizens daily life.
> (Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
People are allowed to gripe about where they live. Just because you live somewhere doesn't make it perfect by any stretch. California has a lot of problems, and needs to address them, regardless of your political persuasion.
I agree with everything you said, but you missed my point somewhat.
You and I know that a senator is not an in-state representative, and that their work is federal in nature. Most people who vote do not know that, and do not understand the distinction between state reps and federal reps. If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
As to the point about CA; I agree, gripe away if you’d like, and I agree CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state; my point was to not go down that rabbit hole, and instead realize that most Californians like it here. They enjoy the weather, infrastructure generally works, etc. As a result, most vote for the status quo. I’m not saying that’s a good thing.
> If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
Sadly, agreed. Perhaps this is a component in the ever-growing push of state issues into the federal level.
> ...CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state... instead realize that most Californians like it here...
Well, this is saying nothing at all, is it? We can safely assume citizens of any state generally like where they live, lest they'd move away if they had the means.
However, we rarely see a dogpile of people publicly bemoaning Massachusetts, for example. Perhaps there is something going on in California right now, some sort of breaking point, where people are starting to realize some of the problems California has are unique to California, caused by decades of possibly misguided but well-intentioned policy. Policy does not happen in a vacuum.
It's also interesting to see someone such as yourself feel it necessary to qualify your love for the state you live in. It has a sort of, captive, feel about it.
I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
I do not get the sense that the political climate in CA is any different than those were when I lived there, excepting perhaps San Francisco which is, incidentally, the same discourse as is happening about NYC in NYC right now too (lots of friends and my family still lives there).
I’m not trying to qualify my love for CA; I was making the point that the people who vote Feinstein (or McConnell) in are generally happy with the status quo in their state. CA was mentioned specifically because we were discussing Feinstein, but that’s why people vote them in; they’re generally content with the status quo.
The ones who are unhappy either leave to states that fit them better (if they have the means), or complain about it to their friends and/or on HN/Twitter. But it isn’t the majority.
> I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc. All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
> The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
That’s because “SF is hell” is a good media story along with “tech bros hate poor people.”
> I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
I don’t disagree; but I think it’s notable that NYC is the other big tech hotspot. I give it five years before Miami is in the news for the same.
> Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc.
I wonder if this is just because we’ve gotten older? I certainly didn’t care when I was 22. I definitely care now.
> All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
California uses "jungle primaries" where the top two vote getters regardless of party advance to the general election. You can't blame the two-party system here, voters could easily choose another Democrat if that's what they wanted.
Yep, and in this case, it's isomorphic to the question, "Why didn't Kevin De Leon(D) defeat DiFi in the 2018 election?" - question whose answers can range from, "not enough votes," to "less money," to "why did the CA coast prefer DiFi and CA's interior prefer KDL?"
The problem is last time her opponent wasn't reputable enough to be a good counterweight. I wish Katy Porter had run and replaced her. I think she was barely in politics then.
Unless it's ranked choice doesnt it still fall to the "least bad" fallacy? Like, people aren't sure that everyone else is going to vote the democrat they want and are afraid if they don't vote for the most likely, then they'll dilute the vote to the point that none of their chosen party wins?
I mean, sure, if the democratic vote was a monolith that was capable of making a single choice or even knowing what its own choices would be we could say that it must be this way because people want it like this. Rather than it being yet another consequence of antiquated voting systems incrementally improving while claiming all the hard work is already done
I think you misunderstand: in California, all candidates, from all parties, run in a single primary (there is no separate "Democratic primary" or "Republican primary"). The top two candidates for each office from that primary are the only ones who advance to the general election. Since California is so heavily Democratic, often what happens is the general election is Democrat vs. Democrat. That was the case in 2018, when Kevin de Leon (another Democrat) ran against Feinstein and lost. Though not by a landslide, only by about 9 points.
Definitely. IMO, the issue in California's particular case is that the Democrat senior leadership isn't too keen to oust one of their own, creating a culture that permeates down. Thus the only candidates willing to run against Feinstein are more fringe members of the party. If a relatively middle-of-the pack Dem ran, it would probably be a much closer race. Anthony Rendon, our current Speaker of the CA Assembly would be an obvious choice, with a largely inoffensive (to the CA Democrat majority, anyways) platform and voting record, but anybody with a bit of experience would do.
In California's fucked up system she actually runs against a Democrat most of the time. I assume it's name recognition and more money that gets her reelected.
This is basically fourth-hand info, so take it with a grain of salt: but what I've heard boils down to this:
The Democratic Party, in its capacity as an actual political organizing apparatus (not an identity/platform), never really recovered from the broad shift in influence from labor to finance in the late '70s/early '80s. It has thus fallen back to relying heavily on a strained ad-hoc network of political machines built by various "rock star" Democrats. That's why the party loosely realigned around "third way" / "blue dog" Democrats in the '90s; it's not that there was some transcendent soul-searching about principles, it's that people like Bill Clinton and Evan Bayh were supported by campaign apparatus that won tough elections. More broadly, this has led to an arguably pathological degree of deference among Democrats to any org that has a track record of winning elections. And whatever faults Feinstein's political machine has, it has that track record.
Yeah, as a Californian asking those around me why they support her over another Democrat in the general after a jungle primary, "seniority" is the answer that stood out.
That makes more sense to me than Feinstein really. He looks after wealthy Kentucky interests, and is a very powerful senator shaping policy for the whole Republican Party; Feinstein seems unaware of Silicon Valley’s interests and basically votes along party lines.
I think you can say the same thing about California. Your mistake is conflating "Silicon Valley's interests" with "wealthy California interests". I imagine it is also true that Kentucky does not have one monolithic base of wealthy or elite agendas.
I think it is more accurate to say that both of them have transitioned into iconic status. The political/marketing machinations have lofted their identities so high that it barely matters that they are humans at all. They are brands. There is also the basic senate rules mentioned elsewhere, which institutionalize seniority.
Look at the list of longest serving US senators and ask yourself if Feinstein is really an anomaly:
Unlike McConnell, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "regular joe" support for Feinstein. There's practically nobody in this thread singing her praises... even among her fellow D's.
I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
But, when you look at Feinstein's accomplishments, she has represent her constituents as well as anybody... She authored the Respect for Marriage Act (undoing the conservative Defense of Marriage Act). She's pursued fair pay for federal wild land firefighters. She's protected millions of acres of federal land in CA for recreation. The list is extensive, as it should be for somebody of her tenure.
And with all that said, I do feel it's time for her to retire. I'm unconvinced on term limits, but I do dislike the tendency of long-time politicians to hang on well past their prime (and this applies equally on all sides of the aisle, and also to the courts).
> I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
The Republican Party of today is changing right before our eyes. Many hard-line issues are becoming soft - famously recently with Trump and his complete lack of religiousness.
Many of the other hard-line issues were distorted by political opponents, such as your claimed "gay" issue (when viewed through a religious lens, the marriage issue makes more sense, it wasn't really about people's sexual preference, it was about a specific word. if anything, republicans are absolutely terrible at getting their message across, consistently... but I digress...).
The point was, the younger generation of Republicans do not staunchly adhere to these "classical" Republican views - and the party is changing. The Republican Party seems to represent a lot more working-class people and minority groups today than a decade ago - voter segments that historically were under lock-and-key for Democrats.
To that end, the Democrat party is also changing; getting pulled a lot more left-ward than most average Liberals are comfortable with. It's a weird world where the likes of John Stewart and Bill Maher sound more like conservatives than liberals.
Both parties have found themselves within an identity crisis. My gut tells me there will be a course correction for the Democratic party not to distant in the future, and the Republican party will continue to "liberalize" as the younger generation takes over. We'll see where the road takes us all...
He looks out for their interests. One of the first projects finished with the infrastructure bill was bridge in kentucky that Mcconnell and Biden opened together.
This shouldn't be surprising. Even before she was old and "of questionable judgement" she was voting for and sponsoring stuff like this. Go back to the war on drugs era and you can find sound bytes of her advocating for all sorts of absurd stuff. And by "absurd" I don't mean "didn't age well but was the party line". I'm talking about stuff that violates rights in excess of what the average party politician was pushing for.
That said, even if you strike her name from the list you know this is bad because it's a bunch of bipartisan long time congresspeople who are sponsoring this bill. When the careerists of the swamp get together to do something we the people always lose.
Many years ago, I remember she supported a similar bill around limiting encryption. Around six months later, it was reported some government agency was spying on senators' emails, and she wasn't happy. I don't think she made the connection between the two, or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data.