Still, even though you may not want to admit it, there are things that progressives in Congress need to do in order to be able to be effective legislators and actually get things done.

Yeah it's called rocking the boat, exposing corporate goons, voting the right way, backing primary campaigns.

That is, if they want to have any sway or say in decision making and if they don't want to be ostracized and rendered completely ineffective and impotent.

This is just a harsh reality of the way things work in DC. Unfortunately it is necessarily to "go along to get along" to some extent. I know you'll probably call me a sellout or a neoliberal or something for acknowledging this, though.

It's one thing to engage in DC civility protocols, that I don't take issue with, it's another to literally fund the opposition that you were supposed to assist in defeating.

What? How is AOC donating to a handful of corporate dems for practical reasons in any way equivalent or even comparable to a firefighter committing arson? AOC still supports the progressive agenda, and she is still fighting for it (even though you may not like how she's going about it). That's a ridiculous analogy.

There's no pRAcTIcAl rEAs0N for this.

This is a total slap in the face to the many people across the country who gave their hard earned small dollar donations for the explicitly stated

purpose of backing progressive political figures, and by giving that money to people who've done nothing to deserve it, she shows she cares more about staying in the good graces of party leadership than maintaining the good will of the base that helped get her in for the purpose of taking on the party and the rest of the rotten dems.

Yes, what you're doing is purity testing and it is counterproductive. No, nobody has to lower their standards. Nobody has to support or donate to AOC if they don't want to.

You dropped your standards.

That's why you're trying to excuse AOC's deceit.

I bet if you were in congress you'd brazenly lie about how you were going to start a PAC that funds progressives with grassroot donor money and then pass it on to rotten Dems who stand in complete opposition to everything you support.

Then your sycophantic follower would bend themselves into mental pretzels to try and excuse your deceitful behavior.

I'm merely asking for some understanding here, and that we should make sure the standards we hold our politicians to are reasonable and wouldn't actually prevent them from being able to get anything done.

Which of these standards are unreasonable?

-Don't fund the political figures who want nothing to do with your agenda

-Support good policies (like the ones in the Justice Dems platform)

-Vote the right way on the major bills

-Don't take mega donor money

-Don't be a generic party loyalist

-Actively try to draw attention to the shady actors in DC

-Undermine the DC consensus

I can't stand corporate dems either, but we need to understand how DC actually works.

We all know how it works.

The political figures are puppets of industry, congress only passes bills that help the major industries (or are symbolic feel good nonsense that doesn't really do much to rock the boat) and those that are not in the major industries get told to pound sand unless the puppets got an election coming up (or a major crisis to deal with) in which case they give out short lived benefits that quell the unrest of the masses.

You're engaging in short-term thinking. The reality is that AOC is able to do so much more good in the future when she does things like this, no matter how ugly or unsightly it looks. I genuinely don't understand why you think AOC being rendered completely ineffectual is preferable to her donating to a handful of icky corporate dems.

Wrong.

She's the one who's engaging in short term thinking.

1.She deceived her grassroots donors. (A point you don't seem to grasp)

2.Her approach is short-sighted because

-it undermines

I'm literally just trying to explain to you how these things work. What you need to understand is that this is a practical matter. You can't take a principled stand 100% of the time and then expect to be even remotely effective as a lawmaker. This is the harsh reality of the matter.

Thinking like that is why the party drifts to the right, you got