Moderation is not obsolete
The case against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, as vigorously prosecuted by fellow Democrat and former state Senate leader Kevin de León, is that she is out of step with today’s more liberal and diverse California Democrats. It’s a way of making Feinstein’s age and her politics part of the same complaint.
At 84, Feinstein is the oldest person in the U.S. Senate, which is saying a lot. That has allowed de León, at 51, to play the young Turk. It has also raised the question of whether Feinstein would stop short of finishing another term, clearing the way for a successor handpicked by the next governor. The senator says she is committed to serving all six years.
Feinstein’s relative moderation, however, is not a function of her years. It dates to the tumultuous beginning of her political career in City Hall, where she became mayor in the wake of the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, and has persisted despite its political disadvantages in California under President Trump. The veteran senator’s now infamous expression of hope that Trump could learn, change, and “be a good president” was a gift to de León and other critics, for whom it proved her hopelessly outdated commitment to civility and compromise with a man who has no regard for either.
But Feinstein has a persuasive answer. “People want me to be effective for California,” she told The Chronicle’s editorial board. If she could steer a version of her landmark assault weapons ban through Congress again, for example, “I need a president to sign it. I can’t get there by calling him names.”
Indeed, if moderation is now a relic, as de León and other Feinstein critics are suggesting, the country has bigger problems than electing California’s next senator. Feinstein’s pragmatic, centrist approach may not be in fashion, but it is still better for the state and the country than separating into mutually hostile tribes with no interest in common ground or facts.
Not that de León doesn’t make a fine Feinstein foil. A San Diego native who represents downtown and East Los Angeles in Sacramento, de León exudes a hungry energy and, as the son of an immigrant single mother, a personal story that contrasts sharply with his rival’s “mansion surrounded by a wall,” as he put it. And he consistently offers the progressive counterpoint to the Feinsteinian centrism that so exasperates the left.
Two decades ago, while Feinstein was preaching border security and carefully framing her opposition to the popular anti-immigrant measure Proposition 187, de León was organizing a massive protest against it. While Feinstein voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, an issue that divided Democrats at the time, de León maintains that he would have opposed not only that but also the post-9/11 measure authorizing the Afghanistan invasion — which all but one member of Congress, Oakland’s Barbara Lee, supported. While Feinstein and other lawmakers have engaged in a fruitless back-and-forth with Trump over protecting young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, de León aimed a legislative finger at the administration’s eye, spearheading the socalled sanctuary-state bill limiting law enforcement cooperation with immigration authorities.
Feinstein in recent years has toiled within the severe limitations of the U.S. Senate’s Democratic minority, even as de León’s Democratic supermajority helped pass landmark legislation on climate change, infrastructure funding, and housing. Feinstein has supported the Affordable Care Act and doubted the wisdom of a “complete takeover by government of all health care,” while de León’s state Senate passed universal health care without bothering to explain how the state would pay for it, leaving the Assembly to kill the bill.
Feinstein leaves so much room to her left that de León isn’t her only more liberal challenger. Another, Los Angeles attorney Pat Harris, shares the legislator’s dissatisfaction with Feinstein and claims to be the true progressive in the race. He distinguishes himself from de León partly by eschewing corporate campaign support.
With no prominent Republicans in the running, the top-two primary is most likely to yield a November contest between Feinstein and de León — and an invigorating debate between two very different facets of the same party. Speaking of which, Feinstein has yet to debate de León but has promised to by November if he remains her opponent. She should: No senator, even one as accomplished as Feinstein, should get a free ride in a democracy.
She is, however, our choice in the June 5 primary.