Dianne Feinstein was no political centrist

Sen. Dianne Feinstein died on Friday. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, the California Democrat was the longest-serving female senator in American history.

As Christians, we should all grieve the passing of any human being. We can even respect the dedication she made to her country. But in our solemn respect at the passing of any human being, we should not let the media rewrite the story of who Sen. Feinstein was as a politician: A progressive stalwart whose convictions were on the opposite side of biblical values.

Coverage of her death has emphasized Feinstein’s moderation. “U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist Democrat and champion of liberal causes” reads the lede of the Associated Press story of her passing. According to the New York Times, “Feinstein called herself a political centrist,” and the L.A. Times declared that “Feinstein was always considered a moderate Democrat.” The Washington Post headline blared, “Dianne Feinstein, centrist stalwart of the Senate, dies at 90.” This from the same paper that described terrorist Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar.”

Was Feinstein truly a “centrist” lawmaker? Not at all.

Soon after her election to the Senate, Feinstein became a leading advocate of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. After the lapse of the ban, Feinstein repeatedly introduced reauthorizations and other gun control measures. Feinstein often referenced the murders of gay-rights icon Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone as an inspiration for her fight against Second Amendment rights. (She served as president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors at the time of the killings and succeeded Moscone as Mayor.)

In July, Feinstein celebrated the delivery of the U.S. Navy’s newest ship, the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, in a fitting final act of the LGBTQ advocacy that spanned her career. Feinstein introduced the so-called Respect for Marriage Act in 2011 which guaranteed federal recognition of same-sex marriage and repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, before the Windsor and Obergefell decisions legalizing same-sex marriage. Feinstein was one of only 14 senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. She also voted against President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and was a lead advocate of its repeal in 2010. Feinstein was an original cosponsor of the so-called Equality Act. Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson called Feinstein “a fearless champion for equality.”

Not to be outdone, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California President & CEO Jodi Hicks celebrated Feinstein, stating “she stood strongly alongside Planned Parenthood, providers, and patients to protect the right of women and others to control their bodies.” Feinstein regularly scored 100 on Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America’s legislative scorecards. In March of this year, she was an original cosponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, federal legislation that would guarantee unrestricted access to abortion and override state abortion regulations. She was a vociferous champion of laws permitting the murder of preborn life.

Feinstein did hold some unpopular views among the Democrats. It was not until 2018, for example, that she reversed a decades-long position of support for the death penalty. (At the time she was facing a primary challenge from the Left.)

Perhaps no single moment embodies the differing perceptions of Feinstein’s politics more than a remark she made during the 2017 Court of Appeals confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Feinstein questioned Barrett, a devout Roman Catholic, about the ways her faith would influence her work as a judge:

Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that, you know, dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.

For conservatives, the questioning confirms the image of Dianne Feinstein as a progressive Democrat more than willing to sideline religiously based viewpoints, one who was often on the cutting edge of liberal politics increasingly at odds with traditional American values inspired by Christian faith. Yet, among progressives, the Barrett questioning confirmed the perception that she was too old to understand and pursue the contemporary progressive agenda. Her question had galvanized support for Barrett.

According to The New Yorker, later, when Feinstein congratulated Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for his handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination hearings, Brian Fallon, the executive director of the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice, declared, “It’s time for Senator Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

The same New Yorker story describes tensions with Feinstein erupting during the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh when other Democratic senators learned that she was made aware of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school but failed to share the news or alert the FBI. (Ford had asked Feinstein to keep the claims confidential.)

After Feinstein declined to support the leftist push to abolish the Senate filibuster, The Nation called her “an embarrassment.”

Writing for The Cut, Rebecca Traister wrote of Feinstein, “For many from a younger and more pugilistic left bucking with angry exasperation at the unwillingness of Feinstein’s generation to make room for new tactics and leadership before everything is lost, the senator is more than simply representative of a failed political generation—she is herself the problem.”

Dianne Feinstein, having dedicated more than 30 years of service in the U.S. Senate to championing progressive ideals, was not yet willing to jettison a defining function of democratic deliberation—the filibuster. She had the audacity to congratulate her friend across the aisle for his “fairness” in running a Senate hearing. Feinstein was not perceived to be on board with burning down cities and weaponizing the Department of Justice against her political enemies. For this, she earned the title, “centrist.”

If that’s what counts as “centrist” in American politics, rather than simply commonsensical, such a label is an indictment of just how far left modern progressivism has become.