I agree with others here who point out that merely having a PoA in place is not a reason that Feinstein should resign. As to whether she should resign for other reasons, I tend think she probably should. But then I think about all the reasons that she shouldn't.
Feinstein is a high-ranking member of the senatorial judiciary committee. Back in April, she asked to be temporarily replaced in that position, but the Republicans blocked that from happening.
The judiciary committee slot is important, because those are the guys who confirm all the federal judges. After sandbagging Obama's appointees for ~eight~ six years, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a flurry of judges under Trump.
To try to catch up now, the currently Democrat-controlled (by the thinnest possible margin) Senate Judiciary Committee wants to confirm as many Biden-appointed judges as it can while it still can. A year-and-a-half from now, who knows who will control what?
Sure, Feinstein should step down, and I think even she probably knows that, but she also knows that when she does so, the Democrats lose their razor-thin Senate majority, at least until Newsom can appoint a replacement.
No matter how quickly Feinstein could be replaced, the transition would offer Republicans easy opportunities to further delay nominations and block legislation of the very sort that Feinstein was elected by the people of California to pass. Nominations and legislation we have every reason to believe that she fully comprehends, regardless of any PoAs in place, and even despite her recent display of other age-related lapses in focus.
Anyway though, maybe her tragic act of hubris in all this was running for another term way back in 2018. If she had resigned back then, instead of next year, we wouldn't be here now. But now that we're here, I don't blame her for recognizing the no-win nature of the situation.
The grocery store I shop at has handheld scanner guns for customer use. I check out a gun by scanning my loyalty card, then make my way around the store, scanning each item as I put it in my cart. When I'm done, the handheld scanner displays a barcode that I scan at the self-checkout scanner. My entire order shows up on the screen there, along with the total cost. I pay, take my receipt, and head out to the parking lot.
I like scanner-gun shopping a lot. I like it because it's efficient, but also because it puts me in control. I can see the real price of everything I take off the shelf, in real-time. If something doesn't ring up at the price it's marked, I know instantly. The device keeps a running total as I shop.
Most days, my entire grocery experience involves no direct interaction with any store employee whatsoever, except maybe to exchange pleasantries with a stockperson. I do 100% of the work of checking myself out. I imagine the money the store saves on me in labor might make up for a lot of the money it loses in shrink.
But the store gets something else from my use of its scan-as-you-shop service. It gets to collect a huge amount of data on the way I shop. Not only does it record everything I buy, but it knows when and where I buy it. It knows the patterns of how I move through the store. It can compare my patterns to the patterns of all the other shoppers who use store scanner guns. It can analyze these patterns for useful information about everything from store layout to shoplifting mitigation.
One of the ways the store mitigates shrink from scanner gun shoppers who might accidentally "forget" to scan an item they put in their cart is point-of-sale audits. Not usually, but every so often and on a regular basis, my order will be flagged for an audit when I go to check out. When this happens, the cashier running the self-checkout area has to come over and scan a certain number of items in my cart, to make sure they were all included in my bill.
My main point in all of this was to offer a narrative that runs counter to the narrative I picked up from the article. I prefer to have more control over my checkout experience, and I will willingly choose to surrender personal information about my shopping habits and check-out procedures in order to gain that control, every chance I get.