IF AOC BECOMES THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE'S TOP DEMOCRAT, WHAT DOES PELOSI THINK SHE'LL DO? SAY "LATINX"?

This is bad:

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is fighting to keep Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) out of a senior position on an important committee.

Despite her absence from the Capitol as she recovers from hip replacement surgery in Luxembourg, Pelosi has been whipping votes to kill Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to become the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee....

The party’s steering committee selected Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who had the backing of Pelosi, over Ocasio-Cortez during its meeting Monday evening, and the New Democrat Coalition, a center-left group of House Democrats, endorsed Connolly on Friday. Pelosi has been making calls and campaigning on behalf of Connolly, according to Punchbowl News and Axios.

This happened despite the fact that Connolly is 74 years old and has esophageal cancer.

Oliver Willis is right:

In the steering committee vote, Connolly got 34 votes and Ocasio-Cortez got 27, according to NBC. She's hoping to win the final vote. It's possible, but Democrats haven't rejected a steering committee choice in a decade.

I'm sure there's more here than just Pelosi's continuing resentment of AOC, who defeated a top Pelosi lieutenant in 2018. Mainstream Democrats inexplicably see this year's narrow Republican victory as a landslide. They think there's a widespread rejection of their policies and their perceived radicalism, which they think AOC represents.

Meanwhile, Republicans, in victory or defeat, place radicals in charge whenever they please. They don't worry about alienating middle-of-the-road voters when, for instance, they pick Jim Jordan to head the Judiciary Committee -- or James Comer to head this committee. Comer, you'll recall, used the committee to give us a long, failed investigation of the "Biden crime family." Did that hurt Republicans at the polls in 2024? They didn't win big, but they won a trifecta. Mainstream Democrats are terrified when a progressive Democrat makes the news (Be quiet! Centrist voters might hear you!) -- but somehow, the radicalism of congressional Republicans never does the tremendous damage to the GOP that middle-of-the-road Democrats think progressives like AOC will do to their party.

I'm sure AOC's opponents also worry that having her as the top Democrat on the committee, or even the committee chair in the future, will threaten the interests of their rich donors. That may be. But aren't some of these same centrists coming around to the opinion that Democrats need to start rejecting neoliberalism? Well, here's their chance. Picking AOC as the top Democrat on this committee would be a nice f-you to neoliberalism. But they won't do it, will they?

Call your member of Congress if you think they can be swayed. I did.

*****

UPDATE: It's over. Connolly won the final vote, 131-84.