If you are a "socialist" operating within the system by participating in electoralism, your job as an elected representative are two fold: heighten the contradictions in the political sphere; throw a monkey wrench in the normal day to day activities of the imperialist death machine. That's it, it's really not that difficult. You show up to congress, say you got elected to pass m4a or vote no on ICE funding, vote down imperialist wars, vote down bank bail outs. Your votes will be lonely and will probably have zero effect in the grand scheme of things, but that's the point. A socialist representative, even a squad of them, is functionally weak and incapable of bringing about proper change.
By advocating exactly for the things the working class supports (healthcare pls), showing solidarity with the international proletariat (no wars pls), and trying to give power to the workers (union protections, higher minimum wage) and you fail, time after time, you fail to get any meaningful support from your colleages; you are demonstrating to the working class that this system is not for YOU. You are trying to get them to wake up and realize the system is fundamentally at odds with THEM.
Failure to do this each and every step of the way is opportunism of the highest order. Refusing to stand up for your own demands, and asking to get votes on healthcare, larger stimulus checks, and better working conditions for the working class, is a failure.
I don't know what is in the water on DC, or if it just takes a certain kind of fucking brainworms to even run for congress, let alone win; but goddamn the whole process of slowly "justificating" the process of siding with Pelosi and Schumer on the procedural votes; the idea of not holding Pelosi's entire leadership position hostage is asinine. Nobody cares if you are a latinx congresswoman from the bronx if you don't pass anything fucking meaningful, or "politically" die trying.
Because it's utterly pointless! We're not gonna be able to use our combined psychic energies to convince 'the squad' to hold a vote they clearly think is useless. So both sides are just sitting here bitching at each other about nothing, there's nothing our arguments can do here, and there's nothing to learn from this either. It's a complete waste of everyone involved's time and effort.
Yes I totally agree with you that us / podcast celebrities / twitter users have no say in the matter and it is 100% useless in that sense. But I do think this discussion is raising a lot of important questions as it relates to people's theory of change. Yes electoralism is a dead end, but in this country it must be something that the left engages with. In this case I think a lot of us have gotten a first-hand look at the limitations of electing "socialists" that aren't liable to answer to the organization they originally represented. Regardless of what your position on the "Dore issue" is.