Democrats, facing critical Supreme Court battle, worry Feinstein is not up to task
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee about to plunge into an electionseason Supreme Court confirmation battle, was asked in the Capitol recently what her strategy would be for the coming fight, she walked by silently, an aide offering that she had a meeting to attend.
As Republican and Democratic senators have taken to television and arranged news conferences in recent days to lay out the stakes and merits of President Donald Trump’s push to install Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the court, Feinstein has not been among them.
Her absence reflects the extent to which Feinstein, a trailblazing Senate eminence who has battled the CIA and gun- rights activists, has become a diminished and increasingly marginalized figure in recent years. And it helps explain the private worry among many Democrats that the woman leading them into a nationally televised judicial knife fight with Republicans — one whose outcome could affect the election and tip the ideological balance of the Supreme Court — may not be up to the task.
At 87, Feinstein, the oldest member of the
Senate, no longer walks through the Capitol without an aide at hand and rarely speaks off the cuff, eschewing national television interviews. Her statements to reporters can require after- the- fact corrections from staff members. Colleagues and Senate aides privately worry she sometimes appears bewildered or disengaged.
Aging is far from a new problem for the Senate, where both parties reward seniority and are reluctant to push their elders aside. Feinstein’s allies insist that she will play her role with dignity and force, and Democrats have quietly put in place plans to keep her at the periphery of the action, leaving public appearances to other party leaders and ensuring that she will rarely be called upon to make unscripted remarks. But rarely has someone with Feinstein’s limitations been asked to take so prominent a stage in a battle fraught with such political risk.
“What is different here is the heightened
scrutiny and the fact, to a significant degree, that everything is on the line when it comes to this nomination,” said James P. Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who as the majority leader had to manage an aging Robert C. Byrd as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. “The groups want blood. Democrats on and off the committee want a real fight.”
“The question I have,” Manley continued, “is whether that is going to be able to happen with her as the ranking member of the committee.”
This being the Senate, the handwringing has produced little by way of direct action so far. Out of respect, none of her colleagues would state their concerns on the record.
But her critics on both ends of the political spectrum are circling in wait. Progressive activists, many of whom argued that Feinstein botched the brutal 2018 confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the 2017 hearing on Barrett’s confirmation to an appeals court, have warned that if she stumbles again, they are ready to outright push for her removal.
“This whole process has the potential to provide even further evidence of how Democrats ought to think about making a change in terms of who is running the committee,” said Brian Fallon, a founder of Demand Justice, a group that lobbies Democrats to prioritize the federal courts.
Republicans, who believe that Feinstein’s handling of the Kavanaugh hearings two years ago helped fire up their base and win them key Senate races, are eager to exploit any of her perceived missteps.
Feinstein found herself uncomfortably at the center of that proceeding after it became public that she had received and kept secret for weeks a letter from a California professor, Christine Blasey Ford, accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault decades earlier. When the letter finally came out, after Kavanaugh’s initial confirmation hearings were completed, members of both parties heaped criticism on Feinstein. Liberals said she had suppressed evidence that could have derailed Kavanaugh’s nomination, and Republicans charged she had coordinated an eleventh- hour attack to try to sink it.
This time, Senate Democrats have taken some steps to keep Feinstein on the periphery as much as possible. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, has made himself the face of the opposition to Barrett with a barrage of news conferences, television interviews and appearances on the Senate floor. His top deputy, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, a senior member on the committee, recently left progressive activists he addressed with the clear impression that he was prepared to play an outsize role shaping the party’s message in the hearings.
After Politico published an article citing three unnamed Senate Democrats questioning whether Feinstein was capable of continuing in her role, Democrats on the committee have stressed they will work as a team. And her defenders say critics confuse Feinstein’s patrician gentility for senility.