I wouldn’t say I dislike her, but I don’t like the AOC worship here.

Yes, she voices what we’re all thinking. She elevates our voice.

The problem is that she’s also unrealistic in expectations, and that can cause a rift. I wouldn’t say her comments cause a rift in the party itself, but among voters.

For example, she was all in on the expanding the SCOTUS bandwagon. Functionally, it’s untenable. Any politician should know that. There’s some loophole that would allow you to do it with simple majorities in house and senate, but that loophole is sketchy and likely won’t work out. And if it does, that opens Pandora box to completely railroad this country next time Reps get simple majorities in both houses. Which may be half a year away.

But it seems like a brilliant workaround on the surface. And people who bought into that pipe dream became extremely disruptive, causing fights amongst blue voters.

And this isn’t the only time. She’s a consistent voice of the Progressives. Which is fine. Idealist should have a voice. But I would prefer it if her and Bernie would also include pragmatic expectations with their ideas in a way that doesn’t put their more moderate colleagues on blast for no reason.

To give it a real world hypothetical we can all probably relate to. I’m a programmer, so I’ll put it in those terms, but this applies to pretty much any job one way or another.

Let’s say you’re maintaining a code base that has a lot of problems. Maintaining it is a nightmare. Ask an experienced engineer, I have identified a number of solutions of varying effort and effectiveness.

The best solutions would require giant re-writes and would require parallel effort from other teams to support our effort. Risk is large

The next best requires extensive refactoring of our teams code base, but can be done in isolation from other teams for the most part. Risk is still large because we’re going to need to swap out major parts of our internal infrastructure, but no impact to other teams.

And then there’s the shortest path. Fix problems as they come up, make small refactors as you can to help relieve some headaches. Let’s you move fast and not be disruptive, but the underlying problems stay around. Smallest risk.

Now, having brought these to the table, management chooses the least risky option because they can’t or won’t commit to larger scale efforts because of other priorities.

Do I talk shit, be extremely negative, try to get other non-management colleagues to join my outcry for the “right” solution? I could. I have. But if I do, I’m putting my employment / influence at risk. And sometimes it’s more appropriate to just keep the ideal solution on the backburner, do what’s immediately effective, and bring the best solution to the table at a better time.

To me, AOC and Bernie are those coworkers that won’t shut up about the “perfect” solution. And maybe even attack their colleagues for not supporting them in their pursuit of perfect when they’re just trying to tread water and get the easier wins to the finish line.