Choppy Waters Ahead
Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
I had just barely gotten up and gotten moving yesterday when my news feed was flooded with headlines that Dianne Feinstein had passed.
My dad, in his phone call last night, talked about how cruel the Democrats were. After all, Feinstein was clearly unwell, and they were still bringing her out to vote. Whether or not this criticism is valid doesn't interest me. Yeah, there's a human element, but it's also like Ruth Bader Ginsburg back in 2020 - there's a razor-thin margin that can literally alter the trajectory of America. It's a ruthless game, but that's politics. It's about advancing a way of life for all, and humanity is often incidental to that.
That said, we are witnessing the end of an era here. While being aware of the country's unrepentant history of using The System to make people feel unwelcome and less than simply because they aren't white hetero Christian males is important, there is a trendy among the current generation to see themselves as oppressed, even in situations where no oppression exists, like at Evergreen College a few years ago. There is a tendency to wear historical oppression like a favorite shirt, and instead of politics, seeking a way for groups of people to co-exist without harm, they see it as a way to seize power and do some oppressing themselves. People, no matter where their ideologies lie, don't want to stop oppression, they want to join the oppressors.
And this is what I mean about the end of an era. NONE of the current generation knows what real fear is. To be completely on your own aside from a few allies, and if you did ANYTHING to suggest you were not conforming, you were a target. In the 1970's, a terrorist group called the New World Liberation Front operated around southern California. They were an anti-capitalist group, and in the mid-70's, Feinstein found herself in their crosshairs. They attempted to assassinate her. I'm not kidding. They had placed a bomb on the window sill of her home (luckily, they made it wrong, so it didn't go off) and shot out the windows of her beach house.
I believe the term for Feinstein is, "forged in fire." In 1978, she was elected head of the Board Of Supervisors in San Francisco. And this was when Destiny came a-knockin'. The mayor of San Francisco was one George Moscone, and his Supervisor was the legendary Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to office in California. For all the talk of California being a hotbed of liberalism and permissiveness, that's bullshit. It's a powder keg that will explode if you throw a wet match at it. On November 27 of that year, the two were assassinated. Rules Of Succession meant that Feinstein was acting mayor until the Board Of Supervisors could figure out what to do. Their solution was to officially make Feinstein actual mayor by a vote of 6 to 2. Feinstein was sworn in just a few days later, on December 4.
Feinstein's appointment wasn't exactly a surprise. Considered a centrist Democrat, she was part of a group that generally opposed Moscone. Feinstein did some good, such as completely overhauling the city's public transportation system in about two years, and coordinating things for the Democratic National Convention in 1984 (you will recall this was when former Veep Walter Mondale was chosen to run against Ronald Reagan). However, in 1982, she vetoed domestic partner legislation in the city. She also proposed banning handguns in SF that year. This resulted in a recall attempt, spearheaded by the White Panther Party. She wound up winning the election. (Mondale, then campaigning for the D presidential nomination, was saying he would choose a woman as his running mate. Speculation was high at this point that he would choose Feinstein. He ultimately picked Geraldine Ferraro instead.)
In 1985, Feinstein publicly revealed details to the press about the investigation into the Richard Ramirez killing spree, which infuriated the fuzz trying to play their cards close to the vest.
It should be noted that, in 1980, Feinstein had her own run-in with an attempt to hijack an election. Back then, Ted Kennedy was trying to run for the D's presidential nomination against then-incumbent Jimmy Carter. Even though polling showed that Kennedy would never win, this is a Kennedy. And the only thing you can be more sure of with the Kennedys than an open bar is that they will do whatever it takes to maintain their oligarchy. (Look at RFK Jr., purporting to challenge Biden for the D's nomination in 2024, but running on a platform that would be more at home with the R's right now.) Bay Area D's, however, thought Kennedy running was a fine idea, including those in Feinstein's constituency. (Feinstein supported the Carter-Mondale ticket.) In August of 1980, the Kennedy camp was urging the DNC to "open" the convention. The move would have allowed delegates to ignore their state's popular votes, and nominate who they want, which, surprise!, was Kennedy. Feinstein was a speaker on opening night, and she gave a rousing speech urging everyone to reject this notion. It was a slaughter - the proposal failed, and Kennedy was told to go back to his mortuary.
Feinstein was elected to the US Senate in 1992, during the so-called Year Of The Woman, which always struck me as less of a political movement and more of a marketing slogan, but whatever. (1992 was also the year the song Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot was released, providing some cognitive dissonance to the whole thing).
Feinstein became emboldened in her time, successfully guiding an assault weapons ban to passage in 1994. But the real fun, where she showed her real ingenuity, came during the investigation of the CIA and its behaviors after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The CIA and the R's didn't want what they were doing getting out. To that end, they had passed a resolution that documents related to that were not allowed to be copied or removed from the storage room for fear of people copying them and leaking them to The World. Feinstein recruited staffers to go in the storage room and copy everything they could by hand, since taken notes was not forbidden, just reproduction. The information found was key to the investigation.
(SIDEBAR: funny how the R's have gone from, "These are state secrets, and they are so secret, all you can do is look at them!" to "So he had boxes of documents in his bathroom and used them as To-Do lists! This is just a witch hunt!")
The point I'm trying to make, the fulcrum of my gist, if you will, is that, when it comes to espousing Leftie policies and actions, not only did Feinstein walk the walk, but she actually risked her life doing it. The public acceptance of a brazen woman defying authority didn't exist at the time (bonus points: Feinstein was Jewish. You think Biden gets shit on for being Catholic? Oh, he's got a fucking walk in the park compared to Feinstein). Whoever follows her is part of a different era, when speaking your mind didn't put your life on the line.
So where do we go from here?
This is where things get really tricky. California governor Gavin Newsom gets to pick the replacement, and he's already said he wants to find a woman of color to replace Feinstein. A noble goal, to be sure, and it shouldn't be that tough. (To anyone saying only someone qualified should be chosen, we just went through four years of a reality TV star and possible Russian operative in the White House. Don't tell me qualifications are important to you.)
The problem is, Newsom has a difficult choice to make. Biden is already making moves suggesting that Newsom is his choice as successor to be the face of the D's once he's done, whether by losing the election or winning his second term. Newsom is slated to give a keynote speech at the DNC when it convenes next year. The publicity machine to hype him up is being gassed up as we speak.
So here's the problem for Newsom - does he appoint an interim Senator to fill out the rest of Feinstein's term, or does he make a pick meant to stick around? If the pick sticks around, this disrupts the campaigning and primaries already gearing up around the state, with whoever was planning on running potentially getting kneecapped (you know they were planning this, you know they didn't expect Feinstein to last much longer, you know they were readying their contingency plans in case her cognitive decline became a campaign issue). Making someone permanent could anger the support he needs in California, not only for his job and his policies, but his broader ambitions as well. California is not as liberal as you think. The population centers, sure. But the unincorporated areas of the state go heavy right, to the point where, in 2021 after Trump lost, there were calls to break California up into three states for "better representation." Being a Leftie in California is not the cakewalk you think it is.
But, if Newsom only appoints someone to fill out the term, he's basically making a sacrificial lamb. Not will this look bad for him. Not only he would be choosing someone not expected to win a regular election, but it could be seen as pandering and be used to hammer him the national stage.
How fitting that, even in death, Feinstein is still rattling political conventions...