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.
If I were placing a bet, it would be on Shirley Weber, a black woman who Newsom appointed to be SoS when he named Alex Padilla to the US Senate. She’s a former state legislator, and at age 75 a 15 month appointment to the US Senate would be a fine way to cap off her political career, while making good on Newsom’s promise to name a black woman and to appointment a “caretaker” who wouldn’t run for the post.
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Let’s not pretend that anyone over the age of 70 immediately becomes mentally incompetent. That’s not only ridiculous it’s insulting. These things should be taken on a Case by case basis.
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Plenty of people over 70 still have cognitive function. Plenty of people over 70 benefit from decades of experience and relationship-building. Plenty of people over 70 make decisions for the benefit of later generations, either via a sense of altruism or to help their grandkids. Just because someone’s old doesn’t mean they’re shitty.
I’m all for running out the shitty old people, just like I’m for running out the shitty young people. But let’s not discount people for their age, either direction.
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The issue is they for the most part have no idea what technology is and thus how to regulate it. They’ve also grown in a completely different political landscape than what people want to see going forward and so it’s just fucking tiring. While I agree they can still do “fine”, people are fucking sick of that.
Correct. We need a lot fewer people like this in public office.
🤣 I remeber this Republican lunatic. Didn’t he also bring a snowball into Congress to disprove global warming?
Most of the shitty old people in congress started out as shitty young people in congress.
Most of the good old people in congress started out as good young people.
A good young or middle aged person is better in congress than a good elderly person, but a good elderly person is way, way better than a shitty young person.
But also let’s not assume they are too. Competency tests exist.
It’s also Ageist.
Ageism is wonderful. Maybe we should just shoot everyone over 30?
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Lol, the idea that age is the issue there and not class is laughable.
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Ain’t no old poor senators.
There is undoubtedly an age where you are wise enough to lead a country. But there is also an age where you will statistically either die soon or become unable to handle your tasks in high ranking position. And for some positions that’s compromising.
We’re not calling them out for being old, we’re noticing that there’s an upper bound age that causes a huge number of problems in these positions.
This, is a lie.
If we’re going to do something like that can we go full Logan’s Run and have a Carousel and orgies and everything?
The children in this thread don’t know what Logan’s run is. 😆
Yeah, I think their version was called ‘The island’, which was a decent movie, but definitely no Logan’s Run.
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Ageism is stupid, but recognizing the limits and needs of the upper limits of age related physiology isn’t ageism.
We don’t let 5 year olds run the country for the same reasons we shouldn’t let 90 year olds. Is there an occasional exception that might actually make a decent leader? Absolutely! …and frankly the 5 year old comparison stands there too - I’d take most 5 year olds over most of the current assholes running the world. But I digress - we shouldn’t run shit like age barriers on the possibility of exceptions.
Another angle I don’t see people talking about much here is that making someone work literally all the way to the grave, is fucking cruel. I get that these folks are power hungry wastes of oxygen who want to just occupy what would otherwise be useful space for as long as possible, but again, exception not rule.
Society has already decided on a general retirement age. Social Security age eligibility should be the cut off for all elected positions.
Man, you really want to raise the social security age that badly?
As long as someone has their cognizant abilities and is capable of doing the job and they want to do the job they should be able to do the job.
We as voters should be voting them out of the office if we don’t like the job they’re doing, or even if we feel they’re out of touch with their constituency, but we shouldn’t be excluding them from taking the job just because of their age.
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.
age·ism /ˈājˌiz(ə)m/ noun prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age.
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Perfect. It’s not overthinking it, while keeping a promise, and not rebuffing anyone who wants to or is already running for the seat. I hope he doesn’t fuck this up.
And then she stays for next 30+ years…
I’m joking, that sounds reasonable and would also fit his statement that he won’t pick up either of the running candidate to not tip the scale and to not tip it would have to be somebody who won’t run next year. So as long as she guarantees that she won’t run, then indeed she sounds like a great choice.
love it