Because she's not a Republican, and competitive primaries for long-time incumbents are often political suicide for the challenger. Voters have a poor set of choices and select the least bad.
I honestly think it’s mostly that voters simply don’t know.
She’s a democrat, but runs against democrats (usually), and wins largely because she’s been there forever and, tbh, California is a pretty spectacular place to live.
Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
(Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
> Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
A senator represents the state's views within the federal government, and has next to nothing to do with internal policies within the state.
Electing Feinstein or some other person has effectively little-to-no impact on a California citizens daily life.
> (Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
People are allowed to gripe about where they live. Just because you live somewhere doesn't make it perfect by any stretch. California has a lot of problems, and needs to address them, regardless of your political persuasion.
I agree with everything you said, but you missed my point somewhat.
You and I know that a senator is not an in-state representative, and that their work is federal in nature. Most people who vote do not know that, and do not understand the distinction between state reps and federal reps. If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
As to the point about CA; I agree, gripe away if you’d like, and I agree CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state; my point was to not go down that rabbit hole, and instead realize that most Californians like it here. They enjoy the weather, infrastructure generally works, etc. As a result, most vote for the status quo. I’m not saying that’s a good thing.
> If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
Sadly, agreed. Perhaps this is a component in the ever-growing push of state issues into the federal level.
> ...CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state... instead realize that most Californians like it here...
Well, this is saying nothing at all, is it? We can safely assume citizens of any state generally like where they live, lest they'd move away if they had the means.
However, we rarely see a dogpile of people publicly bemoaning Massachusetts, for example. Perhaps there is something going on in California right now, some sort of breaking point, where people are starting to realize some of the problems California has are unique to California, caused by decades of possibly misguided but well-intentioned policy. Policy does not happen in a vacuum.
It's also interesting to see someone such as yourself feel it necessary to qualify your love for the state you live in. It has a sort of, captive, feel about it.
I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
I do not get the sense that the political climate in CA is any different than those were when I lived there, excepting perhaps San Francisco which is, incidentally, the same discourse as is happening about NYC in NYC right now too (lots of friends and my family still lives there).
I’m not trying to qualify my love for CA; I was making the point that the people who vote Feinstein (or McConnell) in are generally happy with the status quo in their state. CA was mentioned specifically because we were discussing Feinstein, but that’s why people vote them in; they’re generally content with the status quo.
The ones who are unhappy either leave to states that fit them better (if they have the means), or complain about it to their friends and/or on HN/Twitter. But it isn’t the majority.
> I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc. All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
> The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
That’s because “SF is hell” is a good media story along with “tech bros hate poor people.”
> I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
I don’t disagree; but I think it’s notable that NYC is the other big tech hotspot. I give it five years before Miami is in the news for the same.
> Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc.
I wonder if this is just because we’ve gotten older? I certainly didn’t care when I was 22. I definitely care now.
> All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
California uses "jungle primaries" where the top two vote getters regardless of party advance to the general election. You can't blame the two-party system here, voters could easily choose another Democrat if that's what they wanted.
Yep, and in this case, it's isomorphic to the question, "Why didn't Kevin De Leon(D) defeat DiFi in the 2018 election?" - question whose answers can range from, "not enough votes," to "less money," to "why did the CA coast prefer DiFi and CA's interior prefer KDL?"
The problem is last time her opponent wasn't reputable enough to be a good counterweight. I wish Katy Porter had run and replaced her. I think she was barely in politics then.
Unless it's ranked choice doesnt it still fall to the "least bad" fallacy? Like, people aren't sure that everyone else is going to vote the democrat they want and are afraid if they don't vote for the most likely, then they'll dilute the vote to the point that none of their chosen party wins?
I mean, sure, if the democratic vote was a monolith that was capable of making a single choice or even knowing what its own choices would be we could say that it must be this way because people want it like this. Rather than it being yet another consequence of antiquated voting systems incrementally improving while claiming all the hard work is already done
I think you misunderstand: in California, all candidates, from all parties, run in a single primary (there is no separate "Democratic primary" or "Republican primary"). The top two candidates for each office from that primary are the only ones who advance to the general election. Since California is so heavily Democratic, often what happens is the general election is Democrat vs. Democrat. That was the case in 2018, when Kevin de Leon (another Democrat) ran against Feinstein and lost. Though not by a landslide, only by about 9 points.
Definitely. IMO, the issue in California's particular case is that the Democrat senior leadership isn't too keen to oust one of their own, creating a culture that permeates down. Thus the only candidates willing to run against Feinstein are more fringe members of the party. If a relatively middle-of-the pack Dem ran, it would probably be a much closer race. Anthony Rendon, our current Speaker of the CA Assembly would be an obvious choice, with a largely inoffensive (to the CA Democrat majority, anyways) platform and voting record, but anybody with a bit of experience would do.
In California's fucked up system she actually runs against a Democrat most of the time. I assume it's name recognition and more money that gets her reelected.
This is basically fourth-hand info, so take it with a grain of salt: but what I've heard boils down to this:
The Democratic Party, in its capacity as an actual political organizing apparatus (not an identity/platform), never really recovered from the broad shift in influence from labor to finance in the late '70s/early '80s. It has thus fallen back to relying heavily on a strained ad-hoc network of political machines built by various "rock star" Democrats. That's why the party loosely realigned around "third way" / "blue dog" Democrats in the '90s; it's not that there was some transcendent soul-searching about principles, it's that people like Bill Clinton and Evan Bayh were supported by campaign apparatus that won tough elections. More broadly, this has led to an arguably pathological degree of deference among Democrats to any org that has a track record of winning elections. And whatever faults Feinstein's political machine has, it has that track record.
Yeah, as a Californian asking those around me why they support her over another Democrat in the general after a jungle primary, "seniority" is the answer that stood out.
That makes more sense to me than Feinstein really. He looks after wealthy Kentucky interests, and is a very powerful senator shaping policy for the whole Republican Party; Feinstein seems unaware of Silicon Valley’s interests and basically votes along party lines.
I think you can say the same thing about California. Your mistake is conflating "Silicon Valley's interests" with "wealthy California interests". I imagine it is also true that Kentucky does not have one monolithic base of wealthy or elite agendas.
I think it is more accurate to say that both of them have transitioned into iconic status. The political/marketing machinations have lofted their identities so high that it barely matters that they are humans at all. They are brands. There is also the basic senate rules mentioned elsewhere, which institutionalize seniority.
Look at the list of longest serving US senators and ask yourself if Feinstein is really an anomaly:
Unlike McConnell, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "regular joe" support for Feinstein. There's practically nobody in this thread singing her praises... even among her fellow D's.
I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
But, when you look at Feinstein's accomplishments, she has represent her constituents as well as anybody... She authored the Respect for Marriage Act (undoing the conservative Defense of Marriage Act). She's pursued fair pay for federal wild land firefighters. She's protected millions of acres of federal land in CA for recreation. The list is extensive, as it should be for somebody of her tenure.
And with all that said, I do feel it's time for her to retire. I'm unconvinced on term limits, but I do dislike the tendency of long-time politicians to hang on well past their prime (and this applies equally on all sides of the aisle, and also to the courts).
> I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
The Republican Party of today is changing right before our eyes. Many hard-line issues are becoming soft - famously recently with Trump and his complete lack of religiousness.
Many of the other hard-line issues were distorted by political opponents, such as your claimed "gay" issue (when viewed through a religious lens, the marriage issue makes more sense, it wasn't really about people's sexual preference, it was about a specific word. if anything, republicans are absolutely terrible at getting their message across, consistently... but I digress...).
The point was, the younger generation of Republicans do not staunchly adhere to these "classical" Republican views - and the party is changing. The Republican Party seems to represent a lot more working-class people and minority groups today than a decade ago - voter segments that historically were under lock-and-key for Democrats.
To that end, the Democrat party is also changing; getting pulled a lot more left-ward than most average Liberals are comfortable with. It's a weird world where the likes of John Stewart and Bill Maher sound more like conservatives than liberals.
Both parties have found themselves within an identity crisis. My gut tells me there will be a course correction for the Democratic party not to distant in the future, and the Republican party will continue to "liberalize" as the younger generation takes over. We'll see where the road takes us all...
He looks out for their interests. One of the first projects finished with the infrastructure bill was bridge in kentucky that Mcconnell and Biden opened together.
