Good Question

Over at The Nation, they ask an important question, "If Ken Paxton’s Staff Can Do It, Why Can’t Dianne Feinstein’s?"

This is a legitimate question.  It is clear that Dianne Feinstein* is not (as) corrupt and evil like Ken Paxton, but Ken Paxton's staff was far more ethical and far more concerned with the needs of the constituents than any of Feinstein's staff.  (Except of course for the former staffer who filmed himself smoking a joint at Feinstein's desk as an exit interview)

I get it.  The staff is engaging in the worst cosplay of Weekend at Bernie's ever, but this is not a movie, this is the US Senate.

These folks should never get another job in politics, but they probably have had their prospects improved by their malfeasance:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been in office since 2015, and since 2015 he has been one of the most destructive forces in American law. He’s used his office as a Republican wish-fulfillment machine, trying to win through conservative courts the policies that Republicans cannot win at the ballot box. It was Paxton who organized a red-state challenge to the Affordable Care Act in 2018, trying to get Obamacare declared unconstitutional (he lost). Paxton also led the 2018 challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and brought it all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). And he challenged Obama’s Clean Power Plan in 2017 (he won). During the Trump administration, he turned his attention toward reproductive rights, and he’s been at the forefront of trying to implement Texas’s bounty-hunter law, which punishes anyone who tries to help pregnant people in Texas receive an abortion. So far, during the Biden administration, he’s sued the administration more than 50 times, mainly over Biden’s immigration policies and student debt-relief programs. For Paxton, there is simply no difference between the law and his conservative political agenda.

Paxton has also been one of the most corrupt public officials in America in recent years. He has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud. But he has managed to use his status as attorney general, and a number of procedural tricks, to evade facing trial on those charges. We’re talking about a man who once hopped into a getaway truck, driven by his wife, to avoid a subpoena compelling him to testify in an abortion case. His wife, by the way, is a state senator.

………

Given Paxton’s apparent popularity with Texas voters, I was surprised to see that the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to impeach him last week and put him on leave from his duties pending trial in the Texas Senate. The vote was 121-23. You don’t often see Republicans turn on one of their own like this.

The credit for this shocking turn of law before party has to go to Paxton’s staff. His own employees sounded the alarm on the misdeeds that led to his impeachment.

………

We members of the public tend to treat political staffers as nameless, faceless functionaries who exist only to serve their famous bosses. We don’t expect them to exercise their own moral judgment, and we often give them a pass when they silently and dutifully serve even the most evil and corrupt public officials. Sure, the president’s staffers often become famous, but most people cannot name a single person who works for Clarence Thomas or Josh Hawley or Ron DeSantis, and when those staffers pop up later in some other government role or run for office in their own right, most people don’t hold their prior service against them. We act like political staff cannot be held responsible for the decisions of their bosses.

In reality, the staff is complicit in the policies and decisions of the officeholder they serve, and they know what’s really going on long before the public or ProPublica do. And political staffers, collectively, have a whole lot of power. They are the people who have the option to speak truth to power—or to become mere cheerleaders for the worst instincts of their bosses.

Instead of being complicit in Paxton’s apparent corruption and abuse of power or silent witnesses to it, Paxton’s staff chose to speak out. That’s crucial. A person like Paxton cannot exist without the tacit consent and professional aid of many other people. And, too often, those people justify looking the other way either because of their personal careerist goals, or their supposed dedication to the larger political agenda of the people they work for.

To put it another way: We’re lucky that the people who worked for Paxton are not like the people who work for California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Her failing health prevents Feinstein from doing her job as a leader in a representative democracy. She is being propped up, literally, by her staff. Seeing her wheeled around like this, appearing barely cognizant of where she is or what she’s being asked to do, is tragic in a way that borders on farce.

For wildly different reasons, both Paxton and Feinstein are unfit for their elected offices. Paxton is unfit because he’s a corrupt-o-fascist who couldn’t even find a benefactor wealthy enough to own a superyacht. Feinstein is unfit because she’s not compos mentis—which I believe is Latin for “let’s just make sure she’s comfortable”—and has been unable to participate in basic Senate business for several months. To be clear, there’s no moral equivalency here: Feinstein is a dedicated public servant who got very old and very incapacitated; Paxton is a power-hungry repeat bad actor who got caught. But operationally, neither person should have the jobs that they do. Paxton’s staff knew it, and I promise you Feinstein’s staff knows it too.

………

The bottom line is that Ken Paxton would not have been impeached but for the willingness of people who worked for him to go public with the truth. Dianne Feinstein will not be replaced until the people who work for her are willing to do the same thing.

Feinstein's staff are an embarrassment to themselves, the Senate, and the Democratic Party.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.