no matter what i tweet to criticize aoc, she's still one of the best people in washington (though the bar is very low in US politics). she has done lots of good stuff, and i believe she can do great in the future. that being said, we should still be able to push & criticize her

not every critique should be interpreted as me insinuating house progressives are selling out or whatever. most of the critique we're directing at them is because we assume the are on our side. if there's somebody who'll listen to us it's them, we've given up on all others anyway

there will always be ppl who assume they're selling out,& that's also fine to some extent. ppl are anxious, their hopes and expectations have been crushed over & over. in general, i think we should always err on the side of being too skeptical bc they're supposed to represent you

it's both on principle & in practice a good thing to have high expectations and be tough on politicians, there's little to no downside to that, whereas being too easy on them, always attributing the best intentions, & idolizing them can facilitate an unproductive personality cult

because (and that's an unfortunate reality, not just in the US) bourgeois politics revolves around making tactical/"opportunistic" moves, it's always difficult to assess intentions of politicians vis-à-vis their effectiveness. we don't know what's happening behind the curtain

this adds to another unfortunate circumstance, which is the susceptibility of politicians to get comfortable with their position, making only the safest moves, being established within a certain network of people, wanting to placate to many different groups

and i believe it takes us - the people - to "hold their feet to the fire", push them out of that comfort zone, to keep them in check, remind them of what they have promised in their campaigns, and also tell them what our needs are, so they even know what we want them to do