In 2013, President Barack Obama invited Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for lunch at the White House. The president did not immediately ask Ginsburg, then 80 and has survived bouts with both colon and pancreatic cancer, to resign from the court. He simply noted that Democrats are unlikely to gain control of the Senate after the 2014 election.
Obama’s intervention was unsuccessful, and Ginsburg remained in office. The consequences of his decision would become clear nearly a decade later, when the Republican-appointed replacement cast his fifth vote and decided to overturn Roe v. Wade on abortion rights.
The Democratic Party now faces an almost identical dilemma: The legendary woman who played a key role in shaping the nation’s judiciary is 89 and ill. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), has been set to retire in January 2025, attacked by shingles, unable to travel to Washington, DC, for the past two months and unable to provide a timeline to return to work. Without Feinstein, Democrats don’t have a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee and can’t move President Joe Biden’s judicial nominee forward — eliminating one way to deliver a liberal victory in a divided Congress.
It seems to require the same kind of presidential level intervention. The problem? Biden himself is 80 years old and is often asked to counter similar concerns about age and sharpness, making it an awkward and perhaps impossible conversation.
“It’s a decision we have to make,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press conference Wednesday, when asked if there was a point when Feinstein should step down: “If it has anything to do with her future, that’s for her. The President has been very clear about this.
This is the logical end point of the ongoing Democratic gerontocrat problem: an aging president can’t intervene because an older senator is interfering with his agenda. The problem of gerontocracy, for Democrats, has long been political, causing alienation between younger voters who support the party in large numbers and leaders who feel they do not understand technology, the economy and the crises that are shaping the world.
Political issues have been easily overlooked by Democrats. Millennials and Generation Z are the two most liberal generations in the nation’s history, and many of both cohorts see Republicans as offering little reason to vote for them. Willing to defeat former President Donald Trump and protect abortion rights after overturning Roe has kept youth turnout at the level Democrats need in 2020 and 2022.
Feinstein’s absence is a governance issue, one that won’t be easily dismissed.
J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press
“If they can’t come back every month, with the Senate this close [margin], which is not only going to hurt California. It’s going to be a problem for the state,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sundaywithout ever calling Feinstein to resign.
So far, no Californian has created an insurmountable backlog in the Senate, where something as simple as confirming a judge can take days to debate if — and in modern times, when — the minority party does the process. There are four judicial nominees who have received hearings in the Judiciary Committee but have not voted because of Republican opposition. (Some nominees with bipartisan support are set to come out of committee on Thursday.)
With Republicans in control of the House, White House and Senate leaders have confirmed the judge is the best way to advance and protect the party’s goals, especially after Trump’s own four years in office. Biden manage to confirm more judges in the first two years in office than any of the past four presidents, diversifying the federal bench in terms of identity and profession.
Democrats moved to replace Feinstein in the committee earlier this week, a process that requires 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans predictably rejected try, leaving Democrats with no short-term way to fill her place on the committee. However, Republicans have indicated they will allow Democrats to replace Feinstein if she resigns.
“It’s a temporary substitution that’s asking unprecedented,” Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), a GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, told HuffPost. “If he’s no longer a senator, yes.”
Democrats have taken steps to move away from septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders. The House leadership trio of Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Jim Clyburn (SC) — with a combined age of 248 — gave way to the trio of Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (Calif.), who was only 154 years old.
Still, there is restlessness and anxiety among younger Democratic politicians who want to keep the party moving forward, in some cases from Biden alone, in other cases from more baby boomer leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and even Sens. advanced Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
One of the few Democrats willing to say anything has been Rep. Dean Phillips, a moderate from Minnesota who has been open about his desire to move to a new generation of leaders and has called for Feinstein’s resignation.
“It’s not about age. It’s about competence,” Phillips told HuffPost on Wednesday. “And it’s really sad that we’re in this position. But there was a crisis of honesty and displeasure among my friends.
“I’m afraid that he’s being protected by people who are looking out for their own interests and not their country, and I’m saddened,” Phillips said.
By comparison, older politicians in both parties have been vocal about their desire to block efforts to normalize old politicians who are retreating. Both Pelosi, 83, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), 89, has bristled at calls for Feinstein to resign.
“I don’t know what political agenda is at work to go after Sen. Feinstein in that way,” Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. I’ve never seen him go after a sick person in the Senate like that.
“When Democrats brag about women’s issues and for parents, I don’t think they have the right to Republicans on that, but we don’t brag like that,” Grassley, who is only three years old, said. months younger than Feinstein, told Iowa reporters Friday. “And now they’re going after him because he’s 89 years old.”
Democratic operatives have privately acknowledged concerns about Biden’s age and mental quickness as unknown drivers of his low approval numbers. A Pew Research Center a survey earlier this month found that only 31% of Americans would describe Biden as “mentally sharp” and only 27% would call him “inspirational.” Even among Democrats, only 56% called him mentally sharp and less than half called him inspirational.
Even if Democrats somehow manage to convince Republicans to allow Feinstein’s replacement in the Judiciary Committee, they are not exactly spring chickens lined up for the job: 79-year-old Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) will take her place. . Cardin raised just $15,000 in the first quarter of the year, prompting speculation that he might retire and make way for one of the younger politicians on Maryland’s powerful Democratic bench.
Don’t count. “I will tell you when I make a decision,” he told HuffPost. “Money will never be a problem for me.”