Progressives Up in Arms After AOC Loses Key Committee Seat
Progressives Up in Arms After AOC Loses Key Committee Seat
“At this point almost nothing the Democratic Party does makes any damned sense,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid wrote.
Summary
Progressives criticized House Democrats for choosing Rep. Gerry Connolly over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the top Democratic seat on the House Oversight Committee.
The 131-84 vote, reportedly influenced by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sparked backlash against the party’s “gerontocracy,” with critics like MSNBC’s Joy Reid and others arguing it prioritizes seniority over fresh ideas.
Connolly defended the decision, citing his experience, but progressives argued it reflects the Democratic Party’s resistance to change, hindering its ability to address future challenges and energize younger voters.
It's not just that he's 74...
It's not just that he got diagnosed with terminal throat cancer, and told voters the day after the recent election.
It's that it hasn't been two years since he last violated (the already barely existent) rules against Congress doing a little insider trading.
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/gerry-connolly-stocks/
Like, did anyone think when Pelosi was weighing in on the oversight committee, that the person she was backing wasnt corrupt and would actually hold anyone from either party accountable?
Pelosi didn't care just because she hates everyone under retirement age. It's because she needed to know the person in charge of the oversight committee had no reason to hold anyone accountable.
Probably more about her suspiciously making 66% returns on her stock investments than anything
That's what I mean, she's corrupt as fuck.
Everyone got hung up on Pelosi just "disliking" AOC, but this would have allowed AOC to investigate Pelosi and other corrupt Dems.
So Pelosi made sure a corrupt Dem got it. That way the status quo is maintained: Dems only go after R, and R only goes after Dems. But neither ever make anything stick.
AOC would try to go after everyone corrupt, and the Republicans would go with it if the target was a Dem.
We'd weed out corruption from the Dem party which would increase turnout, and likely retain the seats.
But it would be bad for Pelosi, and she'll always put herself over party or country
The DNC is a right wing corpo puppet masquerading as opposition.
They're far more comfortable with a fascist as President than they would a leftist like AOC.
Stare at what their priorities are a month before Trump takes office, sabotaging their most leftwing members. Commuting the sentences of profiteer judges. Herp derp gotta keep moving right after all! (just an aside, I love the neoliberals defending Biden's corrupt pardons as "just senile/incompetent")
Reminder: the only leftist congresspeople are spoiler candidates. The DNC promotes solely on the basis of how well you prove you can be bought by large money donors, which tells you all you need to know about who's side they're on. The same side as the Fascists on economic policy, as they get the same checks from the same oligarchs.
I've voted blue for 20 years, with my nose held hoping for harm reduction. I phonebanked for Sanders in 2 campaigns. I already know it's all a sham. You can vote whoever you want as long as they're pro corpo capitalism. But in the 2028 primary, when I see the DNC yet again doing everything they can to kneecap a progressive to install a neoliberal, I'm walking away, as it's just another system of control. The illusion of choice.
If the people won't overcome their "free market" propaganda and vote against the shape and priorities of this sociopath owned economy literally legally conning and murdering us for tidy profits, we can't be saved, and there's nothing worth saving left.
The DNC is a right wing corpo puppet masquerading as opposition.
This kind of bullshit is so easy to believe, especially with stories like these.
For any of you under-30s just tuning in to the exciting world of corporate politics and wanting to just go along with that idea for funsies I encourage you to actually look at the jobs to be done. Democrats in office in DC are in the bare hundreds while nationally there are many thousands of actual good people doing the best they can to make this entirely fucked up clusterturd run for just one more goddamn day. Because traffic lights have to work. People have to clean the crap out of the sewers. Trees have to be planted by the city and maintained. Boring, entirely decent work being done by Democrats who have no interest in bombing Palestine and say so every chance they get.
Pitching edgy insults at them helps no one including yourself because the alternative to a national party that isn't owned by trump is absolute worthless chaos. Unless there's a secret unnamed party that we're not hearing about. Ten educated punks in a dispensary does not a political party make. It turns out to be much, much harder than that to do.
If you want to burn it down and don't have any idea what the fuck it does or is, you're doing trumps work for him. If you have a better idea why are you the only one with it?
Hey, if AOC and Bernie say - everybody go that way, then maybe we'll have a new party. Works for me. But until something happens at a national scale like that we've got one already that's open for change. It does involve speaking to others without a keyboard though, so that is a downside, but since it's always been that way I'm not sure we can blame it on corporations, capitalism, (((cabals))) or whatever.
https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775
I love how neoliberals are always more concerned with street lamps and trees for the dwindling middle class areas while never bringing up our greatest sin you have no interest in addressing, housing all homeless without condition. That should come before all else, from the worst off citizens upward. They're dying right now, needlessly. While others live in their compact cars and try to reframe it as a lifestyle because a studio is out of reach.
But they have no bribe checks, and serve capitalism as scarecrows. Dying of exposure, being legislated as not being allowed to exist at all even in supposed leftwing states.
Fuck the pretty commons, the less poors are rooting for the deaths of more poors for the crime of lowering property values while being killed themselves by the rich they trusted, and some still sadly do, to do the right thing by them. But that's your priority.
Honestly beautifying the commons in the areas protected from our most struggling, while our tent cities burst at the seams is beyond perverse.
This attitude right here, which is pervasive among the professional managerial class, is precisely WHY progressives failed to capture the Democratic party post 2016, where-as MAGA was able to successfully take over their corporate party, and bend it to their will.
Progressives fixing the traffic lights and sewers are exactly where Pelosi wants progressives, and no higher.
What point are you trying to make here? You're basically saying "not all Democrats" while admitting that the party leadership is rotten to the core, and no amount of head down, hard working, stay in line, lower level Dems is going to change that. Like obviously nobody thinks every Democrat is a terrible person. But the ones in charge, who make the decisions and influence the party priorities and values, are entirely bought and sold.
"Until everybody changes i will do no work to change anything"
The ol battle axe was in hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery, but Pelosi still has the heart of a true leader, and managed to get a "young 74 year old" the seat. Way to go Democrats! You fucking idiots are why we have trump part deux.
It's been far less reported but they did almost the exact same thing to Katie Porter in California. She was another rising star that got snuffed out by the DNC machine. They redistrict her seat and then they locked her out of the Senate election and pushed one of their elites in her place.
It was almost an exact repeat of what happened to Nina Turner in Ohio in 2021. Everywhere they can the Democrats lock out progressives. The Democratic party does not give one single shit. All they care about is the money and power they get as politicians. Everything they say is lip service.
it’s fine I’ve got experience
A fat lot of good your fucking “experience” has done us lately, wouldn’t you say, Connolly, you ossified, cancer-ridden, insider-trading, neoliberal establishment fuck.
I take issue with using cancer-ridden as a derogatory term, but yeah, experience doesn't mean anything if you're working towards the wrong goals
Think if it as a moral cancer.
Democrats don't deserve anymore support. We've got to get a party for the working class. It's just corporate whores in the GOP and DNC.
The problem with a winner-take-all system like the Electoral College is that if you do not vote for the Democratic Party, you're just underpinning the Republican Party. The unfortunate truth is that every progressive who sat out the November election for various reasons helped put Trump back in the WH. The Electoral College has to go for a third party to be viable.
Or you punish the party by removing its political support, until it properly represents your interests and if it is reluctant to do so, you keep organizing for a third party until it takes over.
The claim that the people not voting Dems helped Trump has to be put equally towards everyone that kept voting them no matter what, until they alienated so many people that a candidate like Trump could win. And Trump didnt win once. Hew won twice. The Dems chose to give Trump the victory over reforming themselves to address working class issues. And with all the talk about he would be the end to Democracy they made a point of showing that donors get their way, not normal voters. So their priorities have been made clear.
You can only keep drinking so much, until the hangover comes. But the longer you delay it, the harder it will hit
That's true right up until it isn't. Just ask the Whigs.
Sure on the national level that's true, but on the local level third parties can definitely make big gains in areas that are safe democrat seats traditionally. Then from there you fight to implement those kinds of systems at the local level and work up from there.
If you're interested in that you can always check out the DSA and see if they have a local chapter in your area. They're not a political party right now but imo if anything is gonna form a true labor third party in the US it will most likely come from there.
The progress wing should leave the party. Force the dems to come crawling or show their hands as sleeper Republicans
The frustration is real. There's a movement to create an American Labor Party. I think if it gets enough steam we might see some real change.
I wish it would succeed but am afraid that this would lead to a bipartisan return to McCarthyism and Red Scare at the time when Russia is acting up again. America is allergic to the medicine known as Socialism for all of its illnesses.
why are the fucking boomers so resistant of letting go of power? pelosi is 84 years old, she belongs in a nursing house, not politics
As with most people in that position, they've been fucking over people for so long that they're terrified of someone turning the tables on them. Hence gathering ungodly amounts of wealth and insulating themselves from the world.
A lot of these people are so old they aren't even boomers... Lol. The oldest boomers are still in their late 70s.
It's sad but true - and a very old story.
Just like, hey here's 100,000 no strings attached oh can you be at our vote on Thursday? - is a very old story.
They're like cats with claws stuck in something. They don't even understand that letting go is a thing they could do
rich old white guy: i have an idea - lets have a rich old white guy do it instead
[all vote yea]
:/
Yeah fuck the Democrats. I'm not giving the DNC or any mainstream PACs any more money. It'll all go through AOC and Bernie from here on out. (Not that my meager contributions mean much to the DNC Corporate whores.)
I'm not actually that surprised a vote by a bunch of politicians was decided based on politics and not which candidate was a better fit.
I'll believe they are "up in arms" as soon as they actually do anything.
Jesus Christ, these people don't learn.
They’re paid not to
Exactly. This isn't a mistake or incompetence, it's the point.
It's what they're paid to do. War over social issue symptoms with their "opposition" to present a false choice to the rubes who believe they're "free," while protecting the completely captured economy exactly as it is... From the people suffering it.
There is NO TIME to do something about the Democratic party better than NOW.
Nothing much going on, no major elections, let's just get ourselves in shape for 2028. Or 2032 of it takes that long, but DAMNIT, let's get started!
They want a leadership power struggle? They want to play games, like everything's ok, "This is fine?" Let's not. Instead of expressing disgust, wringing our hands, shaking our heads, let's start something new. RIGHT NOW.
Because even a year from now would be too late.
DNC: "Look what you made me do"
Old white men gonna old white men.
Pelosi too
I believe at this point she's a honorary white old man
Maybe use those arms for more than just finger-wagging.
slapping? maybe shooting?
How can she slap?!
The Democrats are going to lose the next election by not learning anything from the 2024 election. This will only get worse until we take back control of the party or start our own party and split the vote guaranteeing the republicans win the next midterm and presidential election.
The Democrats are going to lose the next election by not learning anything from the 2024 election.
Which they lost by not learning anything from the 2016 election.
Split, fight, go to war, destroy half of the shitty parts of our party and come back as a unionist party of the fucking people and I might not consider a blue tie a fucking joke the next time I see one.
Clean house, and by clean house, fire yourselves outside of the firebrands and let them take us up to 11.
And they wonder why people start hitting people over the head with hammers.
Pelosi stole that seat
Well... how about a third Party of Sanity?
Sounds good. . . who's running it?
Sorry. No. I did the math on this and I've determined that a vote for Sanity is just a vote for Trump.
You need to end FPTP voting first. So please call the republican congressperson in your gerrymandered district currently authoring the "Ban Liberals From Voting Act of 2025" and let them know you'd like to make it easier for him to lose. If we all work together, we can make it possible for a Libertarian to win a House Seat in 2036.
we can make it possible for a Libertarian to win a House Seat in 2036.
American Libertarianism is an anti-establishment ideology that's been captured and twisted to support the core principle of the establishment, private property rights. At this point it's nothing more than a sick joke.
Did anyone think she would actually get it? I don't think AOC herself thought she would. She even went on the View and called Pelosi "mama bear" 🤮
I don’t think AOC herself thought she would.
Because she knew the remaining boomers (or is Pelosi fucking Silent Generation at that?) would do everything they could to keep anyone with modern views and no great-grandchildren out of that seat.
She's trying to play the game. She tried bucking them for the first couple years of her tenure in that seat. And they locked her out of everything. Pelosi lead the charge in that. AOC has been trying to ingratiate herself to that bitch but it has not helped because Pelosi is fucking cancer to the Democratic party. She sucks up all the oxygen in the room and gives literally nothing back. The reason Obamacare started out as such a god-awful mess is because pelosi refused to even consider a public option. And now it's truly completely humped because the Democrats basically gave the Presidency, the House, and the Senate to the Republicans.
The only answer is chemotherapy. Meaning we need to kill most of the party by voting progressive independent instead of towing the party line. Because clearly they don't give a shit.
Pelosi refused to even consider a public option
Nope. Version 1 of the ACA from the Pelosi House: https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/3962/summary/00
This is the 2nd time I've come across someone lying specifically about this in the past day. Not sure if Zoomer hyperbole or Vlad.
It's been almost 10 years since Bernie was screwed out of the primary.
If progressives give a shit about actually fixing this country they will not be allowed to do that from within the Democratic party.
We need a third party, and if progressives aren't interested in splitting then they are complicate in the status quo
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