Saturday soapbox: Dianne Feinstein must resign

for the good of her party, and for the good of the country.

there’s always some fucking Democrat gumming up the works, eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, always making it impossible for their fellow Dems to get anything done.

it’s maddening.

some days it’s Joe Manchin. if it’s not Joe Manchin, it’s Kyrsten Sinema. if it’s not Kyrsten Sinema, it’s Dick Durbin.

now it’s Dianne Feinstein.

for months, the Senate Judiciary Committee couldn’t get anything done, because DiFi was absent, at home recovering from the shingles.

well, she’s finally returned, but holy fucking shit, things aren’t looking very good.

When she arrived at the Capitol last week after a more than two-month absence recovering from shingles, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, 89, appeared shockingly diminished.

Using a wheelchair, with the left side of her face frozen and one eye nearly shut, she seemed disoriented as an aide steered her through the marble corridors of the Senate, complaining audibly that something was stuck in her eye.

and it seems she’d been hiding the severity of the illness that kept her out of the Senate.

The virus also brought on a previously unreported case of encephalitis, a rare but potentially debilitating complication of shingles that a spokesman confirmed on Thursday after The New York Times first revealed it, saying that the condition had “resolved itself” in March.

and worst of all, she really doesn’t seem to be cognizant.

When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.

“No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.

OK.

“You should follow the—I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”

holy shit.

this is not good. obviously.

look: I get why ancient Senators refuse to step down. it’s a cush job. the perks are awesome: power. free healthcare. a staff. travel. your face on tv.

you don’t really have to work very hard and you get shitloads of time off.

and if you live in a safe, deeply-red or deeply-blue state, you don’t even have to campaign all that strenuously.

hell, I wouldn’t quit that job. would you?

but I’m sorry.

Democrats have a perpetually razor-thin marjority in the Senate and it’s hard enough to get legislation passed even without an absent or frail senator.

we just don’t have the luxury of carrying Dianne Feinstein.

it’s not ageist or sexist to point out that when a person is diminished to the point that they can no longer do their job, when people’s lives are at stake, when so much is on the line, then that person must step down.

Dianne Feinstein must resign.

for the good of her party, and for the good of the country.