The fight between AOC and Pelosi is not good for the Democrats.

Update, December 17, 2024, 12:12 p.m.: On Tuesday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost the election as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee to Representative Gerry Connolly, who –as Axios put it– withstood “a generational uprising.” The original argument for enabling Ocasio-Cortez is reprinted below.

A fight between the minority party in the House of Representatives in late December is rarely a headline-grabbing affair. But the Democratic Party is currently divided over a position on the committee that is quite symbolic of its internal dispute over the future. There are – who else? – Nancy Pelosi and AOC involved.

After the November defeat, House Democrats signaled they were willing to accept a changing of the guard at the top of some key House committees.

It began when 61-year-old Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland persuaded 74-year-old New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, to resign so Raskin could succeed him. Shortly thereafter, 60-year-old Jared Huffman of California convinced 76-year-old Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona to resign from the top Democratic position on the Natural Resources Committee.

In both cases, the septuagenarians passed the torch to the sixty-year-olds. But when it came time to replace Raskin on the important Oversight Committee, a truly young person stepped forward for the role: 35-year-old New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Almost overnight, it seemed as if AOC had the job firmly in place: She secured the support of the majority of Oversight’s Democratic members and spoke to the press about her hopes for the role. However, the position is not awarded by a vote of committee members. The entire Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives votes on it.

That’s where the trouble began. Unwilling to allow a young person to rise in silence, Nancy Pelosi entered the fray. The patron saint of Democratic gerontocracy, 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi, has reportedly retired from her leadership role, but this month she has been actively campaigning for 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who was just diagnosed with throat cancer. Now Pelosi is seeking votes for Connolly, whose potential promotion would complete this “changing of the guard” by replacing a 61-year-old with a man in his mid-70s. And because Pelosi fell in Germany and had to have her hip replaced, she is practically getting votes from the hospital bed.

When Pelosi endorsed Connolly and began making calls on his behalf, the moderate New Democratic Caucus announced that it would also formally support Connolly. Not to be outdone, the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced that it is officially endorsing Ocasio-Cortez. And in a rare move, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also lined up behind Ocasio-Cortez.

It looks like a classic Democratic ideological battle – progressives versus moderates. But that’s not it. Ocasio-Cortez is indeed one of the most well-known progressives in the country, but she is also, more importantly, one of the most well-known Democrats Period.

The most sympathetic viewpoint from Democrats supporting Connolly is that some centrist members are nervous about making AOC such an important face of the party. And lawmakers in their 60s who have long waited their turn don’t want to see the seniority system eliminated entirely. If you browse C-SPAN clips, you’ll also notice that Connolly can be an animated messenger – he’s a self-proclaimed Irish fighter – and he definitely has a cool mustache.

And yet, in terms of the facts and the optics, it is a very, very difficult argument. During a second Trump presidency, Oversight will be a key bully pulpit, exposing and interrogating the new administration’s blatant corruption, keeping corporate executives in check, and more. AOC has worked and spent her time at Oversight for years; It is a committee to which the leadership of the old House of Representatives has sent numerous progressives in the past. Those viral clips of AOC disparaging a corporate executive or, say, Trump’s deportation czar Tom Homan? Many of these come from Oversight.

With Trump in office, the regulator’s role will be extremely important, especially for a party that wants to convince voters that it is well positioned to fight corruption. AOC is objectively a more adept communicator and narrative crafter than almost anyone else in her party, and certainly more than Connolly. Her ability as an explainer is first-rate and her penchant for conveying outrage and injustice is sorely lacking in the party’s upper echelons.

Connolly is a member of the Oversight Board and has served on the committee since arriving in Congress in 2009. From what we hear, he is skilled and experienced in this role. He gained a reputation for his work in fending off Republican witch hunts during the Barack Obama years, experience that will likely serve the incoming administration well.

But as Democrats try to expose the wanton corruption in the Republican Party and the economy in general, it’s pretty obvious which of these representatives has the bigger megaphone to explain what’s going on. Ocasio-Cortez has 8.1 million followers. Connolly has 4,600.

When it comes to optics, it’s even harder to justify. Pelosi, who is undergoing hip replacement surgery, is… well, a loyal member of the oldest guard, who now appears to be settling scores over a feud with Ocasio-Cortez that dates back six years. Pelosi’s penchant for backroom sabotage was easy to applaud when she pushed her 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 an easy promotion.

Ocasio-Cortez has been a good Democratic soldier in recent years. When she first arrived in Washington, that wasn’t necessarily the case. When she ran for a position on the Energy and Commerce Committee in late 2020, Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries apparently retaliated for her perceived lack of loyalty by sabotaging her campaign and blocking her advancement in favor of Kathleen Rice, who had been in Congress for longer, but AOC decreed not even about the official support of their own state’s delegation.

Who, one might ask, is Kathleen Rice? Exactly. She’s not even in Congress more.

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