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PELOSI WON. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOST.  
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Kate Aronoff
December 17, 2024
The New Republic
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_ In sabotaging Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bid for leadership of
the Oversight Committee, party elders have doubled down on a failed
strategy. The elderly are not too old to govern; but they may, be too
attached to a failed way of doing things. _

Nancy Pelosi, Credit: BBC

 

Fresh off hip replacement surgery, Nancy Pelosi, 84, secured another
victory. House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon decided that 74-year-old
Gerry Connolly—who announced his throat cancer diagnosis in
November—will serve as ranking member on the House Oversight
Committee, besting
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a closed-door caucus vote. “Gerry’s a
young 74, cancer notwithstanding,” said Virginia Democrat Don Beyer,
a Connolly ally. Pelosi had opposed the 35-year-old’s run for the
role, “approaching colleagues urging them to back Connolly over
Ocasio-Cortez,” Axios reported
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week.

Connolly will join fellow septuagenarians
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top committee spots next year. Richard Neal, 75, will lead Democrats
on Ways and Means while Frank Pallone, 73, will be the party’s top
representative on Energy and Commerce. Eighty-six-year-old Maxine
Waters will be the ranking member on the Financial
Services Committee, and Rose DeLauro, 81, will helm the Democrats’
presence in Appropriations.

The elderly are not too old to govern. But they may, in this case, be
too attached to a failed way of doing things. The job of the Oversight
Committee, for instance, is to “ensure the efficiency,
effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all
its agencies,” including the Pentagon. Connolly this past cycle
accepted $118,500 from political action committees
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to the defense sector. Ways and Means is the House’s top tax-writing
committee, with jurisdiction over the revenue-related aspects of
Social Security and Medicare, among other programs. Neal is a top
recipient of donations from the insurance industry, having accepted
$412,000 from insurance industry PACs during the 2024 campaign cycle,
plus generous six-figure donations from HMOs and pharmaceutical
companies. Frank Pallone has gotten more than $1 million from electric
utilities since joining Congress in 1998.

In other democracies, the leaderships of parties that have endured
humiliating defeats like the one Democrats saw in November—or even
just regular defeats—resign. That kicks off a process by which
members determine a new, ideally more successful direction,
represented by different people. But the Democratic Party isn’t
really a “party” of the sort that exists in other democracies,
with memberships and official constituencies, like unions, who have
some say over how it’s governed. Members mostly make decisions based
on their own interests rather than to drive some shared,
democratically decided agenda forward.

That’s part of what’s so depressing about the Oversight Committee
ordeal for the couple dozen journalists and political junkies who pay
attention to that sort of thing. Pelosi and the old guard’s
continued opposition to younger talent seems breathtakingly
counterproductive in the face of the Democratic Party’s numerous
challenges right now. Simultaneously, the House’s “resistance”
to Trump and the GOP in the House will be led by people of all ages
who don’t seem particularly interested in that project, despite
having spent the entire election cycle warning that Trump’s
Republican Party represents a second coming of fascism. If incoming
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries really believes that, then why
is he advertising
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willingness to work with the GOP? Why are so many other Democrats, for
that matter, trying to make nice
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Trump acolyte Elon Musk?

But the Groundhog Day of it all adds a special layer of dread: Once
again, Pelosi and AOC are fighting a proxy battle over the future of
the Democratic Party. In 2020, Pelosi squashed AOC’s bid to join
Energy and Commerce over a perceived lack of loyalty
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Now Pelosi has gotten her way again.

This isn’t an ultra-significant outcome in isolation: Whoever heads
the House Oversight Committee—now Connolly—will still be doing so
from the minority. The future of the Democratic Party will not be won
or lost in committee leadership votes, or even those for the
leadership of the Democratic National Committee; these fights are well
worth engaging in for those actually doing it but a fool’s errand
for most people to invest much faith or care in.

For the rest of us, these elections are just a sad reflection on how
committed the party’s top brass are to maintaining their cozy
patronage system. If the Democrats have a future, its inspiration will
come from outside the bounds of its own fiefdoms and sclerotic
internal processes. It will come, for example, from unions that
cultivate leaders who can genuinely speak to working-class voters. It
will come from social movements that build momentum for populist ideas
that haven’t been poll-tested into bland, business-friendly mush. At
the very least, those things can outlive Pelosi and the old guard.
Ideally, it can build an electoral force that aspires to more than
meaningless loyalties and bigger checks from donors.

_[KATE ARONOFF is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the
author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—and How We
Fight Back
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co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
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is also a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and serves
in Dissent’s editorial board. @KateAronoff
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* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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* AOC
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* Nancy Pelosi
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* Democratic Party
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* Congress
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* House of Representatives
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* 2024 Elections
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* Elections 2026
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* Democratic coalition
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* Trade Unions
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* Social Movements
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