The statement came shortly after a member of California's House delegation, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, called on her to step down, saying it is "unacceptable" for her to miss votes to confirm judges who could be weighing in on abortion rights, a key Democratic priority.
Since February, Feinstein has missed more than 50 votes. Her absence on the Judiciary Committee means that Democrats can only confirm judges who have some Republican support because Democrats only have a one-seat majority on the panel.
Final quote, from known progressive Dick Durbin
The committee chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has acknowledged that the pace of confirmations has slowed.
"I can't consider nominees in these circumstances because a tie vote is a losing vote in committee," Durbin told CNN.
There are currently 12 federal judge nominees whom Democrats say they have been unable to advance because of Feinstein's absence. It is not clear how many would have Republican support.
1. ro khanna can call missing votes unacceptable if he likes, but there hasn't been a judge that hasn't been confirmed because feinstein didn't vote this year and there aren't likely to be in the near future, because: 1) dems have a two vote advantage in the senate, plus the vp, 2) most judges are confirmed with bipartisan support, and 3) feinstein isn't the only senator to miss many of these votes.
2. there are 19 judges already advanced out of committee, which is enough of a backlog that they won't be done getting them confirmed for at least a couple of months, so the idea that her absence is slowing the pace of confirmations is simply false.
3. durbin's crying to the contrary, the judiciary committee has another 13 or 14 judges on the docket to move through and at least 9 or 10 of them are expected to have bipartisan support, so you can add another month to how long feinstein would have to miss before approvals might slow down due to her attendance.
if she's still unable to vote from the floor by july we can revisit the discussion.
