Make AOC Head Of Oversight, You Cowards!

Why can’t Dems quit kicking themselves in the dick?

AOC, from one of her campaign ads

It’s weird how Democrats can’t quit slamming themselves in the clam, fumbling the balls, seemingly trying to drown whatever bit of hope for a sparklemagic resistance there may be. Latest example, the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted 34-27 in a secret ballot on Monday to recommend 74-year-old Virginian Gerry Connolly as the ranking member on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Are the Democrats out of touch? Maybe it’s the kids who are out of touch! The entire caucus is set to vote later today, so we shall find out.

First of all, who is Gerry Connolly? We consider ourselves pretty plugged in and read the news for about 16 hours a day, and still have barely noticed this guy. Wonkette has written about him zero times. He represents Virginia’s 11th District, has a paltry 83,000 Xitter followers, and a handsome pushbroom mustache. He’s not on Bluesky, TikTok, or Facebook at all. Which is not the full measure of a person’s worth, sure, but social media sure seems to be a vital way to reach the kids these days. Also, the poor guy has cancer of the esophagus and is undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy, does he really need an extra job too?

But Connolly does have the backing of Nancy Pelosi, who is 84, has been retired from the House speakership for nearly two years now, and broke her hip last week. Still, she’s been making calls and whipping votes from her recovery bed! We love these old Democrats and their tenacity, we truly do. But, c’mon, man. Isn’t it time for a transfusion of fresh blood in here?

Do Democrats just want somebody who’s going to disappear into the background and not be a lightning rod for attacks? Is it a seniority thing? Does Pelosi just not like AOC for whatever reason? Reportedly she is no fan of “the Squad,” scolding them in a closed-door meeting in 2019 that “some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté, but we’re making sausage most of the time.” Wait, you mean they are chopped liver? And she groused to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

The Fucking News implies the Steering Committee — and perhaps Pelosi too — is down on AOC because she regularly backs primary challengers to incumbent Democrats. That seems likely! And it’s a reasonably better reason than “Nancy’s being a bitchface we guess.”

Connolly has certainly put in his time in the House. He’s been there for 15 years, and is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He’s served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Committee on Oversight and Reform since 2009, and been chairman of the Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly since 2013. He’s sponsored bills, and no doubt everybody likes him, because he’s apparently as uncontroversial to fellow Democrats as a bowl of tapioca pudding. And he is not a total wuss, he calls out Republicans on the regular. He got booed on the House floor for telling Jim Jordan he was not about to be lectured by his election-overturning ass.

“I did not vote to overturn an election, and I will not be lectured by people who did!” Damn straight! He goes on CNN and MSBNC to call Kash Patel delusional, Trump a walking conflict of interest, Pete Hegseth a disaster, because somebody’s gotta!

And in the other corner, AOC, age 35, first person to reach a million followers on Bluesky, 12.8 million followers on Xitter, 8.5 million on Insta, 3.4 million likes on TikTok. She’s been out there blasting Elon Musk and his dipshit DOGE committee with all the ridicule it rightly deserves, reposting Bernie and the UAW, talking about wealth inequality, climate change, food insecurity, y’know stuff people actually seem to care about more than the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department pancake breakfast with Santa. She’s got the kind of populism that leads people to vote for her and Trump, which seems puzzling, until you realize most people get their news from Facebook these days.

But, the sausage, the House is about making sausage! Packaging bills into a casing, and frying up those votes! Democrats perhaps don’t want someone who can appeal to Trump voters, they want someone who can appeal to the old, dry chorizos voting in the House, without alienating any of them. And sometimes you gotta cut off your own snout to make the sausage, we guess.

We shall see how it goes!

[Politico/ New York Times archive link]

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