Some People Just Don't Know When It's Over
With the reliably inauthentic Kamala Harris calling on young people (at a Maryland high school) to stay in the fight, yesterday, House Democrats picked old and ailing Jerry Connolly over young, vibrant and inspiring AOC. How motivating is that?!?! “Young people, who are rightly impatient for change, I love that about you,” said Kamala.
On Monday, Cook’s Dave Wasserman tweeted that “the incoming class of 33 House Dems is nearly evenly divided by gender, while the group of 31 new House GOP members includes just two women.” His colleague, Erin Covey, wrote that “Women will continue to make up less than a third of the House, per data compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics. And while the number of Republican women grew in 2021 and 2023, it will shrink by a few members in 2025, as the number of Democratic women will remain basically unchanged. White Americans currently make up a larger share of the House (72%) than the nation (59%), according to Pew Research, and an analysis of the incoming freshman class, along with the outgoing members of Congress, shows that trend continuing. In total, the number of white, non-Hispanic members of Congress will shrink by three in the new year.”
That’s good. As we saw a few days ago, representation matters— especially for communities that have long been excluded from decision-making processes— and identity politics has undeniably played a crucial role in bringing historically marginalized voices into the halls of power— basically anyone who doesn’t happen to be a well-off, white, straight male over 50. When someone sees their identity reflected in a position of authority, it can be deeply validating and inspiring, fostering a sense of belonging and hope for change. This symbolic power cannot be dismissed, as it helps challenge systemic barriers and encourages greater participation in democracy. However, representation alone does not guarantee progress. The policies a candidate supports, their track record and their commitment to systemic change are what ultimately impact the lives of their constituents. Identity without ideology risks becoming mere tokenism, where a candidate’s background is leveraged to deflect criticism of harmful or regressive policies. Kyrsten Sinema’s tenure as a proudly bisexual senator certainly did not translate into any advocacy for progressive reforms (or even for meaningful LGBTQ rights or women’s most crucial issues). Similarly, Ritchie Torres, despite embodying multiple marginalized identities, has completely aligned himself with corporate interests and groups like AIPAC, betraying the very communities he ostensibly represents. True progress demands leaders who pair lived experience with a bold vision for change.
And that brings us to the battle to lead the House Oversight Dems— between a young, fiery Hispanic woman, AOC (35 years old) and a tired old white guy, Gerry Connolly (74) with esophageal cancer and facing debilitating chemotherapy treatments. Online, Republicans had been campaigning for Connolly, of course. Pelosi, who hates AOC’s passion and idealism, pulled away from her stock trading for a few hours and still had the clout to get the Steering Committee to endorse Connolly in a secret ballot, 34-27. Yesterday the full Democratic caucus— always eager to commit political suicide— voted along the same lines.
Conservative Democrats, particularly the corporate-oriented New Dems, backed Connolly while the Progressive Caucus backed AOC, as did, at least on paper, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Most members of the Oversight Committee itself, knew AOC is the better leader and a majority of them were backing her.
Pelosi put her all into killing AOC’s bid. Maybe that’s why God broke her hip and told her to go retire and leave Congress alone already. She was recuperating as best she could but still spreading her bile on the phone with her poisonous calls to members. Alex Sammon, writing yesterday, noted that “After November’s drubbing, House Democrats signaled that they were prepared to accept a changing of the guard atop some of the important House committees. It began with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, age 61, convincing Judiciary Committee ranking member New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, age 74, to step down from the post so Raskin could succeed him. Shortly after that, 60-year-old Jared Huffman of California convinced 76-year-old Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva to step down from the top Dem spot on the Natural Resources Committee.” David Scott, who’s been completely senile for years, is also stepping down as top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee.
Sammon wrote that “Not one to let a young person ascend quietly, Nancy Pelosi entered the fray. The patron saint of Democratic gerontocracy, 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi is supposedly retired from leadership, but this month, she actively threw her weight behind 74-year-old Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who was just diagnosed with throat cancer. Now, Pelosi is whipping votes for Connolly, whose potential promotion would cap off this ‘changing of the guard’ by replacing a 61-year-old with a guy in his mid-70s. And because Pelosi suffered a fall in Germany and had to have her hip replaced, she’s essentially whipping votes from a hospital bed.
The most charitable line on those Democrats backing Connolly is that some centrist members are nervous about making AOC such a major face of the party. And lawmakers in their 60s, who have spent a long time waiting their own turns in line, don’t want to see the seniority system completely scrapped…
And yet, on the merits and optics, it’s a very, very difficult case to make. During a second Trump presidency, Oversight will be one of the most important bully pulpits to expose and interrogate the incoming administration’s flagrant corruption, to hold corporate executives’ feet to the fire, and more. AOC has been on Oversight for years and has done her time there; it’s a committee that the old House leadership shunted numerous progressives to in the past. Those viral clips of AOC dressing down a corporate executive or, say, Trump’s deportation czar Tom Homan? A lot of those come from Oversight.
With Trump in office, the role of Oversight will be extremely important, especially for a party that is begging voters to believe that they are well positioned to tackle corruption. AOC is objectively a more skilled communicator and narrative shaper than just about anyone in her party, and certainly more than Connolly. Her ability as an explainer is top-notch, and her penchant for conveying outrage and injustice is sorely lacking in the party’s upper echelons.
…But as Democrats try to shine a light on wanton corruption in the Republican Party and in the economy broadly, it’s pretty obvious which one of these representatives has a bigger megaphone to explain what’s going on. Ocasio-Cortez has 8.1 million followers. Connolly has 4,600.
On the optics, it’s even harder to justify. Pelosi… now appears to be score-settling over a feud with Ocasio-Cortez that is six years old. Pelosi’s penchant for backroom sabotage was easy to cheer when she was pushing fellow octogenarian and likely loser Joe Biden out of the presidential race; it’s harder to justify when an eminently qualified rising star— who, whether Pelosi likes it personally or not, is widely known to be a cornerstone of the party’s future— pushes for a simple promotion.
Ocasio-Cortez has spent the past few years being a good Democratic soldier. When she first arrived in Washington, this wasn’t necessarily the case. In late 2020, when she ran for a position on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries seemingly retaliated for her perceived lack of loyalty by sabotaging her campaign, blocking her rise in favor of Kathleen Rice, who had been in Congress longer than AOC but lacked even the official support of her own state’s delegation.
Corporate whore and New Dem Kathleen Rice, you may recall, helped the Republicans tank legislation that would have lowered the cost of prescription drugs. A total Pelosi kind of Democrap, she was forced to retire by her Long Island constituents soon after.
This week, Judy Chu (D-CA) reminded her colleagues that aoc is “a very effective messenger, and that’s kind of the conclusion people have drawn from this election— that we haven’t had effective messengers.” Nicholas Wu reported that “The race in many ways is a test of how far Democrats will go as they face a pent-up urge to make sweeping generational changes within the caucus, a yearslong push that threatened to boil over post-election. Democrats don’t have term limits for their panel heads, leading to grumbling among younger Democrats whose paths upward have been stifled.”
