Socialists who try to capture state power are aspiring to cut off the very branch they’re sitting on.

Couldn’t you say the same thing about conservative rhetoric? The people who insist that they want smaller federal government, while vying for control of the federal government?

socialists who reach the heights of state power must either bend to the dictates of capital or they are removed. This consistently happens on the local level too, including Bernie Sanders’ tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont

Bernie isn’t a socialist though, no matter how much he likes to identify as one. Nor is Ocasio-Cortez. They are misusing the word in the same way that FOX News does — they doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a democratic socialist and a social democrat. Bernie is a social democrat, at least as far as I can tell. His policies certainly are.