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Dianne Feinstein died in office on September 29, 2023. She was 90.She had come back to the Senate that May in a wheelchair after shingles and encephalitis. Staff pushed her to the floor. She cast votes until the end.That is the first panel of this cartoon. Public service had already become elder abuse.We watched the same thing with President Joe Biden. On June 27, 2024, the country saw a man who barely knew where he was.Democrats discarded him as a candidate on July 21. They did not force him to resign. Jill Biden and the staff kept him upright.That meant the man they said was unfit to run kept the nuclear codes until January 20, 2025. Six months. The football stayed with a president his own party had already written off.One can easily argue this is elder abuse for the sake of political power. It is disgusting. It should never happen.They needed her vote. They needed his title. The person in the chair was secondary.A republic is not supposed to run on a shell. The people who hid the decline were protecting a majority, not a patient.Feinstein could barely function and was still rolled in to say aye. Biden could not finish a debate and still held the most dangerous authority on earth.The cartoon asks who decides when it is time to step aside. In both cases the answer was the people around them. They decided late. They decided for themselves.Age is not the scandal. Using a failing person as a prop is the scandal.If a party will not tell the truth about the man with the codes, it will not tell the truth about anything else.When a senator is rolled in to vote because the party needs the number, is that public service or elder abuse?