MSNBC host stunningly tears into Nancy Pelosi for tanking AOC's hopes of rising in Democratic ranks

MSNBC host Chris Hayes ripped into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her role in helping tank 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's leadership bid this week. 

Behind-the-scenes, 84-year-old Pelosi was whipping votes for 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly to become the next ranking member of the House Oversight Committee over rising progressive star AOC. 

The move paid off Tuesday with Connolly winning over Ocasio-Cortez with a vote of 131 to 84. 

'It feels like a moment of genuine madness,' Hayes commented.

Hayes said that Connelly, who's been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, will 'do a fine job' as Oversight's ranking member - but he still tsk-tsked the party for overlooking AOC. 

'I understand his colleagues who respect him. I understand the way seniority works in Congress, which has been there forever,' Hayes said. 'But in light of everything that has happened over the past decade, it does feel like Democrats still have not learned a pretty important lesson.' 

Hayes went back to 2013 when some Democrats were calling on liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to step down so that Democratic President Barack Obama could appoint another liberal before the 2014 midterms. 

 Democrats were expected to lose control of the Senate that year - and they did. 

'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 in getting his pick onto the court - now Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

That seat went to conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch after President Donald Trump was sworn-in. 

Ginsburg's seat flipped 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 proximity of the election. 

'Donald Trump and the Republican Senate just a few months before the election replaced her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett further cementing conservative control of the court for generations to come and facilitating the end of Roe v. Wade,' Hayes said. 

The conservative-leaning court did away with the federal right to an abortion with the Dobbs case in June 2022. 

'You would think that would have been enough for Democrats to start taking the age issue seriously but it was not,' Hayes said. 

He then pointed to President Joe Biden's April 2023 announcement that he was going to run for a second term.

'Even though he was the oldest man to ever serve as president and was also clearly having a hard time communicating at the level necessary to occupy the bully pulpit,' Hayes observed. 

'It wasn't until over a year later, when Biden gave a cataclysmic performance in his first debate with Donald Trump that the Democrats changed course after a wrenching, excruciating process,' the MSNBC host continued. 

Party leaders, including Pelosi, pushed the now 82-year-old Biden to step down and he did so on July 21, giving Vice President Kamala Harris just a little more than three months to mount a challenge against Trump - who had been running for a second term since November 14, 2022. 

'Just months out from the election, Biden, again, to his credit, finally stepped aside under enormous pressure, but he clearly didn't do so under the conditions - we can say in retrospect - that would have been best for Democrats to run a winning campaign,' Hayes said. 

'You would think that would have been enough for Democrats to start taking the age issue seriously,' he noted. 'But it was not.' 

Hayes then pointed to the Capitol Hill drama this week. 

'Gerry Connolly won that vote today, and he did so thanks in part to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi whipping votes for him,' Hayes said. 

'Now again, to her credit, enormous credit, Pelosi did choose to step aside and relinquish her job as House minority leader to a new generation of leadership,' he said. 

That role is now being filled by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is 54. 

'She also played an enormous role in the successful effort to push Joe Biden to step aside this summer, which was very hard to do, and I think the right thing to do,' Hayes went on.     

'And now Pelosi whipped votes to make sure that Connolly got the Oversight job over the young star in the party, even as the 84-year-old Pelosi is recovering from hip surgery after suffering a fall,' the TV host pointed out, making the 'genuine madness' quip.