The drive by liberal Democrats to give Senator Feinstein the bum’s rush is shaping up as one of the most unseemly political spectacles in years. Even the Washington Post calls the effort to force into early retirement the senior Coast senator, sidelined by a case of shingles, “ugly.” Speaker Pelosi suspects sexism is at play. Whatever the cause may be, we’re rooting for the venerable Ms. Feinstein, a centrist in her party, to hold fast.

The 89-year-old solon is facing pressure to step down, our Russell Payne reports, in part because she has “missed some 60 of 82 votes this year.” More to the point, as Mr. Payne reports, her absence from the judiciary committee “has held up key votes,” grinding to a halt the Democrats’ drive to pack the courts with “new liberal judges.” Republicans — no dummings — are balking at her suggestion to put a substitute on the committee.

Absent Ms. Feinstein, the judiciary committee — reflecting the narrowly divided Senate’s 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans — is tied, and thus unable to move forward with plans to hold what is likely to be an inquisition of Justice Clarence Thomas. Democrats are salivating at the prospect of “a hearing on new ethical questions surrounding the Supreme Court,” NPR reports, amid discussion of gifts to the justice “from a wealthy GOP donor.”

It’s all too understandable, then, that the activist wing of Ms. Feinstein’s party is baying for her early retirement. A Minnesota Congressman, Dean Phillips, calls her choice to keep her seat a “dereliction of duty.” Representative Ro Khanna, who is co-chairman of the campaign of Congresswoman Barbara Lee to replace Ms. Feinstein, displayed in remarks Sunday a startling lack of solicitude of his own for his fellow legislator.

“She hasn’t been showing up, and she has no intention,” Mr. Khanna observed, adding “She has no return date.” He conceded “it’s one thing to take medical leave and come back,” yet in Ms. Feinstein’s case, “it’s another thing when you’re just not doing the job.” He mocked the idea of “deference to these senators who have served so long.” Instead, Mr. Khanna asks, “How about a deference to the American people?”

Mr. Khanna isn’t alone in his chilly appraisal of Ms. Feinstein’s prospects. The senator “needs to weigh the harm she may be causing Democrats by not being around to vote,” George Skelton asks in Los Angeles Times today. An unmaternal Mother Jones column by Stephanie Mencimer contends that the Coast senator’s “cognitive decline has been on full public display for years, even as she has refused to step down.”

It’s no wonder that the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, writing about the travails and, some say, intransigence, of our ever more geriatric political — and press — leadership, is suggesting parallels to Shakespeare’s King Lear. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” is how Lear himself puts it. The old king’s disloyal daughters, Goneril and Regan, though, are, compared to Messrs Khanna and Phillips, paragons of filial piety. 

Mrs. Pelosi calls the effort to push Ms. Feinstein into retirement “interesting,” noting “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.” Perhaps, but it certainly didn’t keep liberals from hustling Justice Stephen Breyer out the door of the Supreme Court, never mind that he was at the height of his powers. The left feared a repeat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s untimely death — meaning, during a GOP administration.

The voters of the California Republic opted in 2018 for Ms. Feinstein to represent them for a full six-year Senate term, ending on January 3, 2025. We would suggest Ms. Feinstein’s “deference,” in Mr. Khanna’s term, is rightly directed to those Coast voters. Rather than taking orders from the far left and retiring early, it strikes us, too, that serving out a full term in the Senate would be, to borrow Mr. Phillips’ word, Ms. Feinstein’s “duty.”