Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

SUZANNE DOWNING: The Democratic Party Has A Zombie Problem

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It’s Night of the Living Dead among Democrats in the halls of the nation’s Capitol.

Let’s begin with the footage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California being wheeled into the Capitol on Wednesday, photos and videos that were both pitiful and horrifying. Even the Democrat-enabling media was taken aback and started to turn on the Crone from California, telling her that it’s time to go.

That Democrats have put the fate of the nation’s looming debt default on the shoulders of this one incoherent lawmaker is mind-boggling.

Feinstein had been out of service for two and a half months due to a nagging case of shingles. After seeing her so damaged and frail, no reasonable person would advise she is ready to return to the grueling schedule of lawmaking and debt-ceiling busting.

Feinstein is the poster child for elder abuse by Senate Democrats, who also need her for a few crucial votes on some God-awful judicial nominees.

Feinstein is no Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was sharp as a tack and still doing show-off pushups at age 97. Life has come fast at Feinstein since that September day in 2018, when she pinned Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a quarter century her junior, to a wall in the Capitol and bullied her over the Justice Brett Kavanaugh nomination.

Feinstein is also no Congressman Don Young, who was also an old-timer and was being wheeled to the floor of the House during his final year in office. But even at 89, Young at least had his wits about him.

Unfortunately, he had the same “I’m irreplaceable” ego problem as Feinstein, and when he died on the job on March 18, 2022, he left Alaska in the lurch, and ushered in a Democrat to the Congress, one who votes exactly opposite from how Young would have, had he not keeled over.

Congressman Young’s liberal legacy should be a warning to lawmakers to heed the wise words of Kenny Rogers’ songwriter Don Schlitz: “Know when to fold ‘em.”

Feinstein turns 90 next month. With her short-term memory loss and an unmerciful attack by the shingles virus, she’s barely hanging onto the power, her elixir of life.

Although she will not run again in 2024, the jury is out as to whether Feinsten can make it to the end of her term or if she will take the Don Young route. We have to ask California: Is this the best that a state of 40 million people can do?

Then there’s Sen. John Fetterman, who is a shadow of his former self. Unlike the cadaver from California, Fetterman lumbers down to the Senate floor in his shorts, tennis shoes and a black hoodie with the hood pulled up over his misshapen cranium, looking every bit like the grim reaper.

It’s unclear why Fetterman is allowed to violate decorum in the Senate and appear in gym attire, but since Democrats are in charge, the Pennsylvania senator somehow gets a few votes on the record. But not many, mind you: Between February and May, the freshman senator missed 67 of 119 roll call votes, over 60%. The average among senators over their lifetimes is 2.3%.

While Fetterman wasn’t gone like Feinstein for two and a half months, he was hospitalized for clinical depression for six weeks and has the behavior of someone heavily sedated with psychotropic drugs. As a result of a near-fatal stroke during his campaign for Senate, he has a difficult time communicating and has profound hearing loss. By any measure, he is a deeply disabled senator, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

When Fetterman attends committees, his aides put his prepared remarks in 150-point type on an iPad, one or two words per line, so that he can read them. Is this the best that Pennsylvania can do?

Then there’s the Zombie in Chief Joe Biden. At 80, he’s in barely better cognitive shape than Feinstein and is only slightly more physically fit than Fetterman. One fall on the stairs of Air Force One could put this president in a wheelchair, a leg sling, or worse.

It’s a demanding job being the leader of the free world, and Biden will be 81 this November. Only magical thinking could lead one to believe he will become more capable.

Just who is running the show on the budget catastrophe? A growing number of walking-dead Democrats are, and they’re just about to expand the nation’s debt beyond its $31.4 trillion limit so they can spend even more and turn the debt into its own zombie.

While it’s unkind to beat a dead horse on Feinstein’s fragility, Fetterman’s brain fog and Biden’s dementia, we know zombies when we see them, and we all know America deserves better.

Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.