The Patriot Post® · Feinstein in Decline
We all know about Joe Biden’s marked cognitive decline in recent years, but there’s another leading Democrat who finds herself under the same cloud. California Senator Dianne Feinstein, at age 87, was already recently removed from her perch as the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. Now, she’s the subject of some Democrat whispers and subsequent Leftmedia rumor-mill reporting over her mental decline, seemingly in an effort to remove her entirely.
At the New Yorker, Jane Mayer writes that Feinstein’s diminishing faculties are well-known on Capitol Hill. After relaying the story of a November hearing in which Feinstein repeated, verbatim, a question she had just asked Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Mayer adds, “Many others familiar with Feinstein’s situation describe her as seriously struggling, and say it has been evident for several years. Speaking on background, and with respect for her accomplished career, they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said and getting upset when she can’t keep up.”
The handwringing over cognitive decline is, however, largely the Democrats’ way of handling their displeasure with Feinstein over a series of botched judicial hearings. Her gross mismanagement of accusations against Brett Kavanaugh and then the disgraceful fiasco of his confirmation hearings left Democrats apoplectic — because she didn’t succeed in taking him out, not because she sat on bogus accusations until the 11th hour and then reprehensibly smeared a good man.
Ditto for Amy Coney Barrett. It was Feinstein who, in the 2017 confirmation hearings for Barrett at the Seventh Circuit Court, told Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” As Mayer complained in her article, “The backlash over the question effectively indemnified Barrett from any further questions about how her faith affected her judicial rulings.”
Feinstein then had the “gall” to not only tell Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham that Barrett’s Supreme Court hearings were “one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” but she hugged him afterward.
In short, her sins are unforgivable, hence the spate of rumors about her cognitive decline, whether it’s real or not. It’s a long time until Feinstein’s term expires in 2024 … when she’s 91.
On a final note, depending on what happens with Feinstein and whether California Governor Gavin Newsom may find himself soon replacing two California senators, we have to wonder if this isn’t a Democrat effort — like October’s 25th Amendment bill in the House — to lay the precedent groundwork for removing Joe Biden soon after January 20.
Maybe 80-year-old Nancy Pelosi better start checking her coffee…