At 87 years old, California Rep. Maxine Waters isn’t just part of the Democratic gerontocracy the party is trying to fight against — she’s arguably its most visible face.
Thus, approaching the 2026 election, you’d think that she’d be considering retiring — and if not that, at least scaling back her role a bit. Pulling a Pelosi, if you will: take it a bit easy and let your stock portfolio do the work for you.
But, no. Not only does crazy old Auntie Maxine plan on running for her 19th term in office — which she’ll almost certainly succeed at, given her name recognition and how blue her district is — but she hopes to also take control of one of the most powerful committees in Congress.
“If you take a look at my energy and what I do — I am Auntie Maxine,” Waters told Politico in an interview about running again.
“I’m the one who popularized ‘reclaiming my time.’ … I don’t know who’s got more energy, more concern. And so, Maxine Waters seems to be doing alright.”
She’ll be doing more than alright, however, if the Democrats win the House this November. And, if history holds for midterm performance for a party out of power in the White House, they will. And thus, she confirmed, she expects to be the chair of the House Financial Services Committee.
This means, as Politico noted, that the “committee could soon have the oldest leader in its history as it grapples with technological shifts like cryptocurrency, and Democrats look to aggressively ramp up oversight of the president, his family business and his Wall Street regulators.”
There are some people looking to pump the brakes on this — some publicly, some privately.
Publicly, there’s Myla Rahman, her main challenger in the primary process. The nonprofit executive, who is in her mid-50s, said that constituents “are sick and tired of the same old thing” when she announced in February, according to Fox News.
“Time is of the essence,” she said last month. “Why wait when you can make an impactful change now?”
She reiterated that criticism, albeit in more moderate terms, in Politico’s “Auntie Maxine” puff piece.
“She’s done a lot of great work,” Rahman said. “But we’re saying, let’s pass the baton and let a new generation of leadership come have a seat at the table.”
Rahman, of course, has to be public. Most of the criticism of Waters that Politico got was private:
Waters’ grip on the role illustrates the entrenched power that many older members of Congress hold, despite growing scrutiny of elder politicians who show signs of decline while serving. Unlike Republicans, Democrats don’t have term limits for House committee leadership positions. But privately, some Democrats worry about the optics of having an octogenarian — and soon-to-be nonagenarian — in the seat…
In Washington, Waters’ age isn’t the only focus for her critics. Over the years, some Democrats on House Financial Services have complained that she keeps the spotlight of committee activity on herself and doesn’t create enough opportunities for rank-and-file members to lead on issues.
A leader should “always take care of your troops first,” said one committee Democrat granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think Maxine has a challenge with that.”
Maxine Waters has been in politics for longer than I’ve been alive, and in Congress since George H.W. Bush was president. The fact that some people are discovering that Maxine Waters is 100 percent about Maxine Waters now is one of the features, adorable and poisonous in equal measures, of the Democratic Party, one in which obvious personal flaws are obliquely acknowledged several decades too late.
Heck, this is a woman who unironically makes the statement “I am Auntie Maxine” as if this is some sort of great argument in her favor. One half expected her to adopt full-on Reggie Jackson illeism during the entire interview and start referring to herself only in the third person: “Auntie Maxine is going to be the chair of the House Financial Services Committee come January, and if any of these wet-behind-the-ears 50-somethings have a problem with Auntie Maxine, they should come tell it to Auntie Maxine’s face and not this Politicos AOL chatroom or whatever it is you’re running there.”
And yes, one gets that there’s an old 87 and a young 87, although once you’ve reached 80 it’s probably time to stop splitting (very gray) hairs in that department. But fine: Here’s your Auntie Maxine, Democrats. You make up your mind whether she’s still capable of running one of the most important committees in Washington:
Maxine Waters wants to deport Melania pic.twitter.com/5ja21ES3qV
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 24, 2025
Rep. Maxine Waters: “Elon Musk with his high-tech ass may have hacked our last election” pic.twitter.com/JlBvb4oAbe
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 5, 2025
Deranged Maxine Waters: “The president of the United States is a killer.” pic.twitter.com/S5Z64ouHIa
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 5, 2025
I guess you could make the point that this is par for the course for Auntie Maxine. But then, that just makes the point that the Democrats should have reclaimed her time a few terms ago.
This is the invariable problem with the Democrats promising to take care of their establishment gerontocracy, only to back off when hard decisions have to be made. Waters is no asset and a heck of a liability, and at age 88 she could be ranting her radical, senescent keister as the head of a major House committee, and no elected official will go on record telling the woman to leave already.
And it’s not even the outrage of just slowly taking power away from the senile, entrenched, and corrupt: They’re giving her new powers, instead. It’s more proof that all that talk about making the Democratic Party younger and less establishmentarian was just that: talk.
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