Left-wing scrutiny of the Squad and particularly Representative Ocasio-Cortez has steadily veered from constructive criticism and needed pressure to a kind of caricaturish vitriol.

Jacobin is truly panicked about the possibility that the Outsider Left doesn’t actually end up inheriting and using the Democratic Party as a tool to disseminate socialist policy at large, but seems largely unwilling to ask why that might be the case.

Perhaps they should stop defending those elected officials (e.g., the “Squad”) who exacerbate the issue by publicly paying lip service to the socialist cause but then usually voting in accord with the neoliberal, Democratic Party line instead.

Have they done some progressive things? Sure, but are they exemplary, socialist democrats simply because they’ve, for example, been instrumental in banning fracking in NY? Hardly, not sure why that’s on the list of accomplishments except that it’s a “leftist” example of policy making, I suppose.

This article consists of hand-waving apologetics that wash over AOC’s problematic, often decidedly neoliberal voting record with feel-good mentions of, for example, the failed Green New Deal, and it reeks of desperation

Perhaps Jacobin is merely attempting to convince itself, but an injunction to think of “the health of the socialist and broader progressive movements” feels rather pathetic at the end of an article that’s largely failed to defend Jacobin’s young, socialist Wunderkinder against the leftist critique that they’re not legitimately socialist.

It’s tough being a member of “Squad” these days.

Is it really, though? AOC and her ilk continue to build their careers (and their wealth) by happily selling their politically-profitable, “socialist” personas to a tragically hoodwinked outer-left constituency that’s just hopeful for meaningful change.

See ya at the next Met Gala, AOC.