Okay, I’m pretty late with this one—what else is new?—but the defeat of House Democrat liberal star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the position of ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee by Illinois Democrat Gerry Connolly, despite the fact that, among other things, Gerry is both 74 and suffering from esophagus cancer, does seem to be an omen of sorts, suggesting that the Democrats continue to prefer to lose safely than take a chance on winning unsafely.
On the one hand, poor Gerry sounds like a parody of boring—he’s been there for a long time, he’s paid his dues, and he’s tried twice before to win the ranking member’s spot, so how about a little sympathy for an old guy, particularly one with, you know, esophagus cancer? On the other hand, it’s generally agreed, including by the likes of me, that the Dems went way too far “woke” since the 2018 congressional elections that brought the AOC into the limelight, and it’s time for the Democrats to start listening to the folks who live east of the San Adreas Fault and west of the Hudson River for a change.
The problem is, I can see both sides of this argument, but I’m still tempted to go with the Notorious AOC on the admittedly less than certain hope that responsibility will educate her and that she’ll grow into the job, because, frankly, what’s Gerry going to bring to the table that he hasn’t brought already, and do we need to run the risk of having yet another old timer as the face of the party? Yet even as I write this I wonder more and more if putting AOC in such a position of visibility and power is a good idea. A year ago I wrote a review of Ryan Grim’s excellent book, The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution, remarking unfavorably on her many “flamboyant” statements circa 2018—defunding the police and eliminating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, for example—which showed a painful appetite for irresponsible purity as an end in itself.
More recently, Ocasio-Cortez watched Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren make an unattractive fool of herself while struggling to extract a moral from the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and then decided that she could do an even better job of it than Lizzie could. Which, in fact, she did.
Warren, in an interview with the HuffPost, acknowledged that “violence is never the answer” but that “you can push people too far,” and that “The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system.” Warren quickly walked back the statement the next day, “explaining” that she should have been “much clearer that there is never a justification for murder”—though what she should have done was not make the statement in the first place.
Apparently, Ocasio-Cortez decided that, rather than having gone too far, Warren hadn’t gone far enough, saying that “This is not to say that an act of violence is justified, but I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.” In other words, charging a lot for a prescription drug (a very common complaint) is like shooting someone in the back, more or less. Alexandria then added that “Health care in this country has gotten to such a depraved state that people are living with things they should never have to live with. And this is not to say and this is not to participate in that glorification, but we need to understand that extreme levels of inequality in the United States yield high degrees of social instability.”
So, a choice between a boring old dude guaranteed not to make waves or a passionate young firebrand in love with the sound of her own false equivalencies. Maybe we should go with Gerry for two boring years after all and hope that things look better circa Wednesday, November 4, 2026. Oh, and don’t forget the Bach and absinthe. They’ll come in handy too.
