Just reading the thread below, we all need to take a step back to the basics of our analysis.

Why is AOC popular or noteworthy?

Her electoral success and general popularity reflects a much broader shift in the consciousness of the US working class , and this shift has its roots in the fallout of the 2008 crisis. This is also why Bernie Sanders found a receptive audience for his message, why the DSA now has tens of thousands of members, why strikes, work-stoppages and unionization efforts are at the highest levels in decades, why more than half of people under the age of 30 in the United States prefer "socialism" to "capitalism," and so on. Class struggle is on the upswing in the US, and AOC's popularity is an expression of this phenomenon.

Your analysis has to be grounded in the class forces at play and the material conditions as they exist. The material conditions of life for the working class are a product of the productive forces we have available, and how those forces are organized socially. Under capitalism, we have tremendous productive forces, enough to produce more than enough shit for everyone in the world . But, capitalism, as a set of relations, has become literally counterproductive, because the operation of capitalist relations leads to overabundance for the few, and denigration and bare subsistence for the many. The operation of capitalist relations creates class struggle for this reason.

When someone talks about a reform, or--even worse--a politician, "improving the material conditions" for the working class, they are just using the language of Marxism to make a point that directly contradicts Marxist analysis. The way to improve material conditions is to unleash the potential of our productive forces, and the way to unleash these productive forces is to change the relationships under which they operate. Tweaking capitalism, in one country, at this stage of development, isn't going to make it work any better from the perspective of the material conditions of the working class at large.

TL; dr, socialism, the working class overthrowing capitalism, is the basis for improving the material conditions for the working class.

So, back to AOC. She has ridden the wave of rising class struggle into a seat in the Democratic Party. What are the class forces at play in that party? If you look at the party's origins, it's development/history, it's pretty obvious that it's always been a ruling class party: of capitalists, of slaveowners, of the ruling class. People like to pretend that it's like "just a ballot line," but at no point in the party's history has it functioned in any way besides being a political vehicle for the interests of the ruling class, including their interest in subsuming threats to their rule.

AOC actively governs in that capitalist party. And while she's actively governed in that capitalist party, it's not like her popularity has budged that party's position even a millimeter on the question of which class should be in power. And that is the decisive question for "improving material conditions." Instead the Dems have bent over backwards to keep any whiff of reform for the working class off of the table, and indeed the democratic party will most likely continue and expand austerity policies into the next period, to make the workers pay for the capitalist, Covid crisis.

And they push austerity not just because they are greedy or inept or whatever, they push austerity because capitalism doesn't work, it is in profound crisis worldwide, and that is literally the only way out for them. Capitalism just can't sustain big reforms anymore, it is not capable as a system.
Here's how Bernie can still win? That's why Bernie was never going to win.

We need independent fucking working class politics, class struggle politics, politics that actually are on the trajectory of improving things for working people. We don't need socialist politicians pretending like the Democrats are somehow an avenue for working class politics ,while the Democratic Party grinds our faces into the dirt a little further. These are not questions for later, these are questions for now. There is no halfway position, no incremental step, on the question of which class should rule.