Dianne Feinstein was the rare Democratic lawmaker who refused to grant teens and tweens undue influence in politics, as a 2019 confrontation demonstrated.
Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving senator in California’s history, passed away today at the age of 90. Most obituaries will likely focus on her response to the 1978 assassinations of then-mayor George Moscone and member of the San Francisco board of supervisors — of which Feinstein was president — and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. Thrust into the mayoralty, she is remembered for playing no small part in helping her city move through an exceptionally dark time in its fraught history.
But her finest moment as senator came four decades later. In February 2019, climate-advocacy group the Sunrise Movement — one of the most annoying activist organizations in existence — sicced a group of doe-eyed children on Feinstein, apparently expecting its juvenile proxies’ youthful exuberance and plucky charm to win the senator over to its side on support for the Green New Deal.
What it got instead was a master-class in public service. Instead of coddling the kids like many Democrats do, promising them they can have anything their hearts desire of public policy with nary a trade-off, Feinstein told them the truth.
“There’s reasons why I can’t, ’cause there’s no way to pay for it,” the California senator told the children, who clearly had never considered the argument that feasibility of legislation matters. “I don’t agree with what the resolution says,” she added. Feinstein went on to inform the kids, who seemed to have been put up to this in a shameful display of the progressive inclination to use American youth as political tools, that you actually need a majority of lawmakers to vote for a bill in order for it to reach the president’s desk. She didn’t mention this, but the president at the time was Donald Trump, who obviously would’ve vetoed a Green New Deal in any form.
Perhaps the best moment of the exchange came when one of the teens who barged into her office tried to impress upon Feinstein her obligation to do the bidding of those who voted her into office. After asking the girl’s age and learning she was 16 years old, Feinstein replied, “Well, you didn’t vote for me.”
In a political landscape that often places a premium on the opinions of children who are generally misinformed by the activist groups seeking to use them as pawns, Feinstein did her job. She explained how the legislative process works, held firm, and refused to treat the kids as the special little snowflakes — who deserve undue influence on lawmaking — other progressive politicians say they are. Whatever our disagreements with the late senator may have been, at least she took her job seriously enough to be honest with the teens and tweens about their demands. We should appreciate her refusal to allow social-media-inflamed passions to cow her.
You can find the video on YouTube, and I really do encourage readers to watch it.