The argument of “sponsored bills” passed in Congress to determine legislative effectiveness is either ignorant of how Congress works, or is disingenuous.
The last 2 Congresses have been the least effective in history and have passed the least legislation of any Congress ever. Any impactful legislation that AOC could propose of course isn’t going to get any traction because there’s only a handful of progressive members of Congress.
Your argument appears to be we shouldn’t elect any progressive members of Congress because they won’t be effective because there’s not enough of them to pass legislation. Do you see how backwards that logic is? You’re creating a chicken before the egg problem.
Only 1 piece of legislation sponsored by Bernie Sanders got to the President’s desk, and it was vetoed and didn’t pass. Yet I don’t see anyone making the argument that Bernie Sanders is an ineffective lawmaker.
AOCs and other progressives’ agenda isn’t to introduce new radical legislation, it’s to pull proposed legislation to the left so that it is more effective than it otherwise would have been. Pelosi has needed AOC’s and the rest of the squads votes to make legislation pass and has had to give concessions because of that fact.
They screamed about Build Back Better and told Pelosi not to call the vote and warned that relying on Joe Manchin to pass it would result in less effective watered down legislation. Instead of listening to them and trying to alter the bill to get more votes, Pelosi called a vote anyway and surprise surprise Manchin did an about face and wouldn’t pass BBB and we were forced to take the watered down Inflation Reduction Act.
So as a result of Pelosi trying to push through legislation by doing a deal with the devil (Manchin) we got less effective legislation and not BBB which would have been something similar to FDR’s new deal and second new deal which were instrumental in putting people to work in this country and building our infrastructure. Would you call that effective legislation?