Why do Californians keep re-electing her?
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
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.)
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I agree with all of that. I wish everyone did.
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.
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).
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...
> Republican party will continue to "liberalize"
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_United_...
Edit to add: remember when we used to have this conversation about Strom Thurmond or Robert Byrd? It's idiomatic.