Californians are crazy, but even Californians don’t think much of Kamala Harris. Buried deep in the latest IGS-Berkeley poll (I know the pollster who runs this survey, Mark DiCamillo, and he’s solid) that finds 50 percent of Californians still approve of President Biden’s job performance is this nugget:
When voters are asked to assess the job that home state Vice President Kamala Harris is doing, 35% say they approve, 45% disapprove and 20% have no opinion.
There’s also this finding, which intersects with the previous item here about how younger voters are souring on Biden:
A comparison of Biden’s current job ratings to those he received one year ago across major demographic subgroups of the state’s voting population shows significant declines across virtually all major subgroups, with the largest percentage-point declines in the following segments:
- Asian American (-18 percentage points) and Latino voters (-18).
- Younger voters, including both those age 18-29 (-19) and voters 30-39 (-18).
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle reports today:
Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions
WASHINGTON — When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.
Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours. . .
The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. . .
Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
It is this latter point that makes me think this story is planted, as part of a campaign to force Feinstein to resign and allow Gavin Newsom to appoint a successor ahead of a bad election season for Democrats.
UPDATE—The Chron story is spreading like a California wildfire in a Santa Ana wind, and Feinstein, who refused comment to the Chron on its story, has issued a statement asserting that she is still working hard, don’tchaknow, for the people of California. So shut up.
And when you’ve lost Norm Ornstein. . .
Mark Hemingway reflects:
Meanwhile, this didn’t take long:
Idea: Maybe if Feinstein is pushed out, Newsom can appoint Kamala Harris back to the Senate, and solve two problems at once?
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