Dems pushing Feinstein to pick side on filibuster

Sen. Dianne Feinstein can’t hide anymore. She is about to feel the heat for not opposing the filibuster — and much of the pressure will come from fellow California Democrats.

Feinstein has largely dodged criticism while progressives focused on Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the Democrats who have most openly opposed getting rid of the rule that allows a minority of 40 senators in the 100member chamber to block a vote on any bill.

But that silence toward Feinstein, rooted in deference to the 87yearold former San Fran

cisco mayor’s long, pioneering career, is about to end.

The heat is growing because several Democratic priorities are heading to the Senate — including gun control, police accountability and a sprawling bill called HR1, aimed partly at keeping Republicans in many states from making it harder for people to vote. Those bills will go nowhere in the Senate as long as Republicans can jam them by invoking the filibuster — but to do away with it, Democrats will need every one of their 50 senators onboard.

Part of the reason Feinstein hasn’t felt the pressure is that people aren’t sure where she stands. Not even Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21, one of Washington’s top government watchdog groups, can say.

“I don’t know what her position is,” Wertheimer told me.

Join the club. Neither does Feinstein.

“The senator understands this is a very important issue and continues to review it, but doesn’t have a statement at this time,” Feinstein spokesperson Tom Mentzer told me.

Aram Fischer, a leader in California’s Indivisible community of leftleaning activists, replied: “It’s definitely time to take a position.”

It’s something Feinstein’s California colleague, Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, has done: He’s already made it clear he would do away with the filibuster for “strong contenders” such as bills on climate change, health care and voting rights.

For months, Indivisible activists have been meeting privately with Feinstein’s staffers to try to get her state a willingness to restrict or dump the filibuster. No luck. So they are going to take their campaign public.

In the next few days, they will unleash letters, emails, phone calls and social media posts urging her to oppose the filibuster so that HR1 can pass. Among the bill’s provisions: Requiring states to set up automatic voter registration systems, allowing early voting and mail voting, and mandating that political district boundaries be drawn by independent commissions rather than state legislatures.

It’s an urgent priority for Democrats because Republicans in many states have embarked on a campaign to restrict who can vote and when. The nonpartisan Brennan Center counts more than 250 such bills in 43 states so far this year, the vast majority proposed by a GOP aggrieved over former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Some of the bills are squarely aimed at suppressing the votes of people of color. The House in Georgia, a state that was key to Joe Biden’s victory and Democrats’ gaining control of Congress, has passed a bill that, among other things, would limit voting on Sundays, when many Black churches hold getoutthevote drives.

The proposed changes to Georgia voting laws are nothing more than “a version of Jim Crow in a suit and tie,” Stacey Abrams, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate turned voting rights activist, told Mother Jones magazine.

Feinstein could do something to stop that, activists say.

On Monday, Indivisible will send a letter to Feinstein signed by leaders in the organization’s chapters from Plumas County to San Diego, representing 75,000 to 100,000 very energized activists.

They realize that Feinstein has long sought compromise with Republicans. But that’s not realistic when no Republicans will do the same, they argue. And far from being a hallowed Senate tradition, activists note, the filibuster was most famously used by Southern racists for years to block civil rights legislation.

So they are trying to convince an institutionalist who was first elected to the Senate in 1992 by appealing to her sense of history.

“Why would Sen. Feinstein want to stake her legacy on an arcane rule with racist origins that further depletes California’s power in the Senate?” Fischer told me.

Joining Indivisible is the 1.4 millionmember liberal activist group Courage California, whose online petition drive demands that Feinstein ditch the filibuster so the Senate can pass HR1. She will also start feeling pressure from MoveOn, the 10 millionmember liberal organization, which is planning a campaign to target senators who oppose reforming the filibuster.

If they succeed, Feinstein may look like an outsider in her own party. In addition to Padilla, former President Barack Obama and some centrist senators, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have called for ending the filibuster. It is going to be harder for Feinstein to hide her nonposition behind Manchin and Sinema.

Activists say she has few reasons not to act. Unlike Manchin — who represents a red, Trumploving state, or Sinema, who is from a swing state, Feinstein has little to fear in deep blue California. Plus, it’s not clear she will run for reelection in 2024, when she will be 91, although she hasn’t ruled it out.

Activists know that Feinstein has never been in a weaker position. Last month, a Berkeley IGS Poll found that 45% of the state’s registered voters disapproved of her job performance, while just 35% approved and 20% had no opinion. It was her lowest approval mark ever.

“She’s not as powerful as she once was,” said Jessica Taylor, a Senate analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

But she is still influential, noted Alec Bash of Action SF, whose members plan to join the lobbying effort.

“If she were to come out and oppose it,” Bash said, “then maybe Manchin and Sinema would, too.”