MSNBC host Chris Hayes called out former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her role in undermining 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s leadership bid.
Behind the scenes, 84-year-old Pelosi was gathering votes for 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly to become the next member of the House Oversight Committee over rising progressive star AOC.
The move paid off on Tuesday, with Connolly beating Ocasio-Cortez by a vote of 131 to 84.
“It feels like a moment of real madness,” Hayes noted.
Hayes said Connelly, who has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, will “do just fine” as a member of the Oversight slate, but he still criticized the party for overlooking AOC.
‘I understand his colleagues who respect him. “I understand the way seniority works in Congress, which has always been there,” Hayes said. “But in light of everything that’s happened in the last decade, it feels like Democrats still haven’t learned a pretty important lesson.”
Hayes harkened back to 2013, when some Democrats called on liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign so Democratic President Barack Obama could appoint another liberal before the 2014 midterm elections.
Democrats were expected to lose control of the Senate that year — and they did.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes raised concerns Tuesday night that Democrats still don’t seem to understand the age issue — as a 74-year-old congresswoman with cancer defeated rising star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the House Oversight rankings Committee member to come
“Ginsburg refused to step aside,” Hayes recalled.
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2015, Obama was blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from getting his pick on the court — now Attorney General Merrick Garland.
That seat went to conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch after President Donald Trump was sworn in.
Ginsburg’s seat passed to conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the 2020 election, after the then 87-year-old died in September of that year.
Senate Republicans still pushed through her nomination despite the closeness of the election.
“Donald Trump and the Republican Senate replaced her with conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett just a few months before the election, further cementing conservative control of the court for generations to come and facilitating the end of Roe v. Wade,” said Hayes.
The conservative-leaning court struck down the federal right to abortion in June 2022 with the Dobbs case.
“You would think that would have been enough for Democrats to take the age issue seriously, but it wasn’t,” Hayes said.
Chris Hayes didn’t like that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left), a progressive rising star, lost a leadership race in part because 84-year-old former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (right) managed to win votes for Rep. Gerry Connolly
He then pointed to President Joe Biden’s announcement in April 2023 that he would run for a second term.
“Even though he was the oldest man to ever serve as president, he also clearly struggled to communicate at the level necessary to occupy the bully pulpit,” Hayes noted.
“It wasn’t until more than a year later, when Biden delivered a catastrophic performance in his first debate with Donald Trump, that Democrats changed course after a heartbreaking, excruciating process,” the MSNBC host continued.
Party leaders, including Pelosi, urged the now 82-year-old Biden to resign and he did so on July 21, giving Vice President Kamala Harris just over three months to mount a challenge against Trump – who had declared himself a candidate for the elections. a second term since November 14, 2022.
“Just months after the election, Biden, again, to his credit, finally stepped aside under enormous pressure, but he clearly did not do so under the circumstances – we can say with the benefit of hindsight – that would have been best for Democrats to run set. a winning campaign,” Hayes said.
“You would think that would have been enough for Democrats to take the age issue seriously,” he noted. “But it wasn’t.”
Hayes then pointed to the Capitol Hill drama this week.
“Gerry Connolly won that vote today, and he did so in part because former Speaker Nancy Pelosi won votes for him,” Hayes said.
“Pelosi, once again, to her great credit, has chosen to step aside and hand her job as House Minority Leader to a new generation of leaders,” he said.
That role is now filled by Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who is 54.
“She also played a huge role in the successful effort to get Joe Biden to step aside this summer, which was very difficult to do, and I think it was the right thing to do,” Hayes continued.
“And now Pelosi has won votes to ensure Connolly gets the job of overseeing the party’s young star, even as 84-year-old Pelosi is recovering from hip surgery after a fall,” the TV host noted. the joke of ‘real madness’.