Hillary Clinton Says Dianne Feinstein Shouldn’t Resign
Hillary Clinton this week weighed in on a question that has been puzzling Senate Democrats and much of the party at large for months: whether California Senator Dianne Feinstein should resign in the face of mounting health concerns that have made it difficult for her to work to do.
Mrs. Clinton’s answer was no, but based largely on an expectation that Republicans would exploit the vacancy, not an evaluation of Mrs. Feinstein’s health or performance.
“Here’s the dilemma: The Republicans won’t agree to add anyone else to the Judiciary Committee when she retires,” she told Time magazine on Monday. an interview published Tuesday night. “I want you to think about how worthless that is. I don’t know in her heart if she really wanted to or not, but right now she can’t. Because if we get judges confirmed, which is one of the most important ongoing commitments we have, then we can’t afford to leave her seat vacant.”
Mrs. Clinton suggested her answer might be different “if Republicans said and did the decent.” But, she added, “They won’t say that.”
Ms. Feinstein is recovering from shingles, encephalitis and Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which kept her out of the Senate for more than two months until early May. She also suffers from amnesia and faced a number of calls to resign even before her latest health problems. But it was her recent absence that prevented Democrats from bringing forward some judicial nominations, causing those calls to spread from mostly left-wing voters to even a few Democratic colleagues in Congress.
In April, in response to growing pressure, Ms. Feinstein asked for a temporary replacement on the Judiciary Committee, but Senate Republicans refused to grant it.
It’s not clear if Republicans would keep the seat open if Ms. Feinstein stepped down. At least one Republican senator who objected to a temporary replacement, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said he would support a permanent replacement. And refusing to fill an official vacancy would be a greater precedent-break than refusing to fill an informal vacancy.
But given Republicans’ own precedent in the Senate — they refused to let President Barack Obama fill a Supreme Court vacancy in 2016 because the next election was too close, and then allowed President Donald J. Trump to fill vacancies even closer to the election of fill in 2018. and the 2020 Election — Ms. Clinton’s concerns are not unfounded.