She has a caretaker who is acting as a guardian, but that care taker is Nancy Pelosi's niece, and Pelosi want's Feinstein to finish her term, so the seat can go to Adam Shiff, and not be filled by Governor Newsom, who has said he would appoint a Black woman to the seat, likely a progressive. Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee.

As a counterpoint, Feinstein is on the Judiciary committee, and if she were to retire mid-term, Democrats would lose that seat until the next election. So Republicans could then halt any judicial appointments.

As a counter counterpoint, Feinstein hasn't been showing up to that committee, so it's already happening.

People shouldn't be continuing to vote her into office.

The way it's supposed to work is voters are supposed to notice and not reelect that person. But not enough voters participate in primaries and then when general elections roll around, we're stuck electing the moderate dinosaur or the fascist. People need to stop asking Congress, a body conposed of grandparents, to outlaw grandparents (and therefore themselves) from running and start just not hiring them anymore. That way when you have an old person who still has their wits and does a good job, you can keep them around instead of it being all or nothing.

If only there was something her family could do. Oh well.

The Senate can remove members, it is in the constitution. I don't know all the details, but it rarely happens.

Damn. I hope the end of my days isn’t marked by such rancor.

The voters themselves are decrepit. Young people say voting won’t change things and bring their own prophecy true.

Why should we be punished if life expectancy goes up? Nobody should have to work until they're too old to fully enjoy life.

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I'm not a fan of this. Moving the retirement age to life expectancy would mean that you only get to retire if you live beyond your expiration date.

You’re probably right. And it’s not like any of them will ever vote for term limits. Our political system is a joke.

If we were serious about having an actual impact on climate change, we should be talking about how long it is actually fair or reasonable for any human being to live.

They need representation, they don't need to be the whole representation. In fact, I'd say that 55+ people represent them quite well, since they are aiming to retire in the next decade anyways.

I mean, they can vote, and they are a big sector of the voting base, so even if the politicians are younger, there will be enough of them wanting to please the 67+ sector.

Let's add some babies and teenagers while we're at it. I don't see them represented.

Voting is supposed to do all this for us, it is the check/balance.

Problem is that more than half of Americans who should vote, don’t vote.

You can easily make this argument towards teenagers as well, but they're obviously illegible. Yet their rights and futures are being stripped away by the elderly.

There should absolutely be a hard cap and Senators should also be forced to use the services they provide (i.e. stop making millions stock trading) post retirement so it's guaranteed to be beneficial.

I agree, I'm quick as anyone to joke about senility but to wholesale cut off our elders from decision making goes against all of social history.

All that knowledge and wisdom is valuable, even if it's just "we tried this and it didn't work"

Why do we need a law ? Didnt they, the people, vote for this old person or not ? I mean, if you are going to vote for a dry old person to represent you, that's on you, unless there's something I don't understand about the Senate.

What we need to be doing instead of setting an arbitrary age for them to retire is to give them term limits. I know that they make the laws and of course aren't going to give themselves a deadline for their own job anytime soon, but it would be really nice to have. That way you get a more consistent rotating cycle of fresh faces every 2 - 6 years, instead of the same fucking person over and over. It doesn't help that, psychologically speaking, people are far more likely to reelect the incumbent even if they know the incumbent sucks.

There needs to be a system in place for health evaluation

The unhealthy need representation as well!

No the retired need representation as well.

You should have known that.

I am proud of my vocabulary, but I don't know that I'm unique in my use of the word. Thanks, in any case!

The primary system is institutionalized insanity. This is why our choices devolve into Weekend at Bernie's vs. a rapist Russian stooge.

Source re Pelosi?

I heard someone joke that if her staffers aren't propping her up to keep their jobs but are actually delighting in seeing her frightened and confused in public, that person had new respect for the staffers. It's an amusing way to reframe this tragedy.

I don’t believe in restricting who can vote or who can run. Doesn’t matter how qualified or unqualified someone might be, if voters choose them, then then that is that.

The real issue here is that our voting systems are so broken and corrupted that the preference of voters is nearly never actually relevant to the outcome. Banning older people from running or putting in term limits won’t change that.

Term limits are particularly harmful because they exaggerate the “revolving door” problem, a legislator that know they don’t have to run again has no reason to listen to the public in their final term, instead their incentive is to line up another job for when it is over, such as with companies that are lobbying them.

Green representatives are also extremely prone to being manipulated by experienced lobbyists as well, and term limits on legislators will drastically increase the amount of green legislators.