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 35-year-old 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 last week.
Connolly will join fellow septuagenarians in 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, or PACs, linked 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 leadership 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 his willingness to work with the GOP? Why are so many other Democrats, for that matter, trying to make nice with 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. 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.
