Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is 88 and still serving in the Senate. Some colleagues are beginning to question whether she is still fit for office.
“When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.”
“Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, they said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation,” the paper said.
Of course, lawmakers don’t like to simply retire and fade away. They’ve spent their lives in the limelight and disappearing is their big fear. What’s more, when lawmakers die in office, they sometimes lay in state in the U.S. Capitol, a high honor.
But there is concern now that Feinstein is “rapidly deteriorating.”
“Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California,” the Chronicle said in a piece headlined “Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions.”
Feinstein won’t be up for re-election until 2024, but she has filed paperwork indicating she might run again. In January 2021, she filed the initial re-election paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) last week, L.A. Magazine reported.
Hellbound and Down 