I mentioned it earlier, but it is a symptom of the political system that functions as a vetocracy. I agree that being a self patter is not a good look.
I don't disagree that our representatives should be more progressive, but in the case of partisan gridlock, that has less to do the ideological orientation of Democratic representatives and more to do with the fact that there are a large number of veto points in our presidential system (unlike a parliamentary system in which relatively fast change can occur if any party/coalition gets a majority). Republicans have polarized asymmetrically to such an extreme degree, and the movement of people into cities has caused the political power of mostly urban Democrats to be inefficiently allocated and thus diluted vs. the mostly rural Republicans; that's the major cause of congressional dysfunction. Like, look at this
article from 1994 complaining about gridlock; it's only become worse since then for the reasons I mentioned. Basically, presidential systems are bad.
Regarding this race in particular, I wish Feinstein would have chosen not to run for reelection. Given how rancorous some of the responses have been (like, accusing Feinstein of basically being a Republican, really?), I think some of the reaction has to do with the fact that she's old and a woman, which gives me some pause. But on the merits, I do think that there's a strong case to be made that California should be represented by someone more progressive (esp. where civil liberties are concerned). I voted for Kevin De Leon in the primary, but he's still relatively an unknown and serves more as a protest candidate (better candidates didn't run since Feinstein was running). So I'm amenable, but I really need to take a look at his record, and I hope that newspapers really dig deep to make sure there aren't any skeletons in his closet that we have to worry about. The main thing for me right now is that the
sexual harassment scandal in the state senate happened on his watch; it's still an ongoing issue/story, complicated by the fact that he shared an apartment with one of the accused, and it would be a big deal if he knew about the cases but did nothing.