Dianne Feinstein 2.0: Eleanor Holmes Norton is even older than Joe Biden, and nowhere to be found.
Democrats appear to have another Joe Biden situation on their hands.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, has represented Washington, D.C., as a nonvoting member of the U.S. House of Representatives since the George H.W. Bush administration. She has repeatedly described herself as the city’s “warrior on the Hill.” If Norton were physically and mentally able, she would be leading her party’s opposition to Donald Trump’s anti-crime crackdown in the nation’s capital. Alas, she is nowhere to be found.
Politico reports that Norton has been conspicuously absent from the raging public debate over Trump’s decision to send in National Guard troops to restore order in the crime-plagued capital. She hasn’t appeared in public or given any interviews since Monday, when her office issued a press release denouncing the “historic assault” on the district and demanding passage of her misguided D.C. statehood bill. Her name did not appear on a joint statement from her Democratic colleagues whose districts border the capital. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said he hasn’t spoken to Norton, and her office denied Politico‘s request for an interview.
Because the subject is a Democrat, the media outlet is excessively charitable to Norton. Her absence in the midst of a controversy that has rallied the Democratic Party in defense of its core values—tolerance of crime and leniency for criminals—is bizarre enough to raise serious questions about her fitness to serve. Politico writes that Norton has “mounted a back-seat response” to Trump’s crackdown—the sort of nonsensical euphemism journalists often invent in stories that might reflect poorly on Democrats.
A person granted anonymity to discuss “Norton’s thinking” said the delegate was keeping a low profile for “strategic reasons,” and was working tirelessly behind the scenes. (Sure.) The office of D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser declined to comment on Norton’s furious efforts away from public view. Democrats are approaching the situation in the same way they dealt with concerns over Biden’s age and fitness to serve. Some lawmakers have “privately voice[d] concerns about her fading presence in the House,” but no one will comment on the record because they are “loath to publicly criticize Norton given her long history of fighting for the city.”
Kinney Zalesne, the former DNC official who is running against Norton in the Democratic primary, was the only person willing to criticize her on the record. She blasted the delegate’s failure to provide “a loud and consistent and powerful and unrelenting voice” for D.C. residents. Because she can’t even vote in Congress, some would argue that Norton’s only job is to yell at Republicans on camera, something she has never shied away from before.
It’s anyone’s guess whether Norton is actually planning to run for reelection in 2026. She has told reporters that she’s running, but her staff keeps walking it back, insisting she is still having “conversations” to determine “what’s best.” The comments she makes in person to reporters have become so unreliable that journalists have questioned whether they should keep quoting her. Norton’s not-so-secret decline has drawn comparisons to Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator from California who died in office at age 90, several months after rebuking critics for urging her to resign.
Norton is slightly younger than Feinstein, but older than Biden, who would have been 82 by the time he was sworn in for a second term. She was born in 1937, several months after Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in for his second term, just as the Hormel Food Corporation was preparing to debut its revolutionary canned meat product, SPAM.
In 2015, at the tender age of 77, Norton was caught on film performing what many regard as one of the worst parking jobs in automotive history.
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