Interesting comments on Feinstein and other old senators by Lisa Desjardins on PBS NewsHour

[question everything]

LISA DESJARDINS: There are a lot of unspoken layers here.

The charge here is that Senator Feinstein is mentally unfit.

I spoke to her the last week that she was here in February. It was a normal conversation. It was short, but normal.

Other reporters have had different experiences.

Notably, she did not seem to know when her retirement was announced. But her office tells me that she is in charge. She is daily speaking with them. And my understanding is that, unless something changes, she does not plan to retire.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, how does that compare with other senators you cover?

LISA DESJARDINS: Notable difference.

I can count on both hands -- I need both hands to say how many older male senators I have spoken to who have been confused, who haven't understood me, including one who called me, had a rambling conversation that was very confusing, that person no longer in the Senate.

But there is a question here about a double standard.

And House Speaker, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised this herself.

LISA DESJARDINS: Let's look at where things stand.

Right now, the current 118th Congress, the average age of U.S. senators is 64 years old.

I looked at the Department of Labor. The average age in the U.S. work force, 42, much younger.

Another way of looking at this, a third of the current U.S. Senate is 70 years of age or older.

There is obviously number of senators that have been there a very long time.

It's a gerontocracy.

https://www.pbs.org/video/calls-to-resign-1681504942/

And a video

at the 2:29 mark

[walkingman]

1. I admire and appreciate Sen. Feinstein for her work through the years but

I think she need to retire in the near future. Of course I always think of RBG when this this comes up and I am sure if she were able would agree she should have left for obvious reasons.

[question everything]

2. I, too, think of RBG but in that case she should have done it in 2015 or 2014. Five years before

her death! We know what happened when a vacancy - Scalia - opened in early 2016.

[emulatorloo]

3. She is retiring. Several good dems are running for her seat in 2024. I believe she favors Adam

Schiff.

[onenote]

7. I don't see how you can be sure she would agree with you.

I am unaware of her ever expressing regret for not resigning before Trump became president. Indeed, before Trump was elected she was quoted as saying "I will retire when it's time. And, when is it time? When I can't do the job full-steam." And after he was elected, she reiterated her intention to stay on the court, stating (in 2018): "I'm now 85. My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so I think I have about at least five more years." And in 2019 she responded to the argument that she should have stepped down years earlier when Obama was president, stating "When that suggestion is made, I ask the question: Who do you think that the President could nominate that could get through the Republican Senate? Who you would prefer on the court (rather) than me?”

I don't think any of us can be "sure" that Ginsburg would agree with Monday morning quarterbacking about her decision to stay on the court.

[Hekate]

4. Thanks for the transcript & the video. I was only able to catch part of her segment, but thought she

…. did a really good job exploring the issue of age and the double standard.

[keep_left]

5. The increasing age of US Senators has been compared to the declining days of the USSR...

...starting from--roughly speaking--the Brezhnev days onward. There were a number of interregnum figures between him and Gorbachev, and none of them lasted long, seemingly keeling over immediately upon taking office. It was a little like the papacy of John Paul I, whose reign lasted a whopping 33 days.

Things aren't exactly the same--I would hope that our leadership is more competent than the moribund Soviet system of the late '70s--but the parallels can be easily seen.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Sen. Grassley was 88 years old in 2021 (so now 90? maybe). I've known people in this age range

that are sharp as a tack still, and their mental facilities are still there in abundance. I think that this is purely a repug attack on Sen. Feinstein.

However, there seems to be discrepancies in the ages of representatives representing Americans whose average age is roughly 40 (per a goggle search) vs. the avg. age of the senate and/or house. I know that folks gravitate to more experience, more knowledge in the skillset of their representatives, and voters did elect them still to be their reps (House or Senate), but as they say, it's a gerontocracy. Especially more so when so many of us, in the 'real workforce', if we reach a certain age, must retire from our former companies.

Does this mean that the layout of our Congress should be looked at in more detail, that is, more House and more Senate members be apportioned to the states, thus perhaps tamping down any generational concerns on the part of one age group from dominating the other age groups? This (hypothetically, double the House/Senate population from 535 to 1070) would also in theory do away with the favoritism shown towards states such as North Dakota and South Dakota (two senators each, while the states of NY and/or Calif., other states with their massive populations still only get two each). The House seems already in line w/ the population growth, but appointments, etc. are only confirmed in the Senate, and the House doesn't get involved w/ a lot of the stuff the Senate does.

These are ramblings on my part. I (and I think a lot of others too) don't really know what the answer(s) are.

However, I do have to say that I still hear of age discrimination still around (friends searching for jobs, and the under the table reason that they still haven't found a job is that they are too old (proving it in a Court of Law is a different story as we all know). It's funny that Congress had mandated in the past that age discrimination is wrong, etc., and yet, it's still here in the US but not in Congress. Must be nice to live in a different tier of Society.