As someone who is naturally wary of excessive displays of enthusiasm about...well, about most things really, but especially about political parties and definitely about politicians, it is my gut reaction to balk at the virtual chants of “AOC for President: 2024”.

Aside from the fact that the timeframe feels too far-fetched to be worth the excitement, putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea – especially when your “eggs” are your hopes for political and ­economic change.

But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – New York Congresswoman, member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and bearer of three initials, in case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last two years – does feel like something worth getting excited about. And that’s precisely because she firmly situates herself as part of a broader movement which doesn’t begin or end with her.

No matter how much the media, her supporters (from the American left to confused British centrists), or her political ­opponents, are fascinated by her as an ­individual, she refuses to be what she could so easily have become: a tokenist nod to progress without the political action to back it up. This, in a nutshell, is why establishment Democrats are so scared of her.

Never has that fear been so openly in ­evidence as in the wake of this month’s election, as the party scrambled to explain why, although it won the presidential race, it failed to deliver the promised landslide victory. Having lost five seats in the House of Representatives and gained only one in the Senate where the Republicans have a majority (unless Georgia has something to say about it), this wasn’t the result that anyone was hoping for.

And, in the age-old tradition of large, “more progressive than the other guys” ­parties, the obvious response to this in some quarters was to blame the left and opine over how, if they’d only been a bit more like the truly terrible people on the other side, they might have had more ­success. (Labour, I’m looking at you.)

According to the Washington Post, ­Virginia representative Abigail Spanberger urged other House Democrats to “not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again”, while House majority whip James Clyburn reportedly warned Democrats not to voice support for Medicare-for-all in the ongoing Georgia campaign. It seems some Democrats are happier to take their cues from “Never Trump” Republicans like ­former Ohio Governor John Kasich – who endorsed Biden and said the ­“far-left” had “almost cost him this election” – than from their own activists on the ground.

Never mind the reality of what happened – that every single candidate who backed Medicare-for-All won re-election, or that 92 out of 93 co-sponsors of the Green New Deal who were running won their seats, or that progressive ­policies ­explicitly on the ballot were passed, ­including a $15 minimum wage in Florida and the legalisation of cannabis in four states.

None of this matters, because the ­reaction from the centre to the election ­results is not really about what wins votes or what could win votes if they actually tried. It’s about a battle for control which, quite simply, they don’t want to lose. In this struggle, Republicans are not the only, or even necessarily the primary ­enemy, as much as anyone who wants to shake up the system and unsettle their comfortable dominance in a political sphere from which the vast majority of people are completely disengaged.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been among the most outspoken following the election about the real failings in the ­approach taken by many in her own ­party. Ocasio-Cortez has drawn a clear line ­between this and her own campaign and that of fellow left wingers such as newly re-elected Ilhan Omar of ­Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both of whom, like Ocasio-Cortez, were ­challenged from within the party at the primaries.

But the key problem Ocasio-Cortez has pinpointed is not a question of who had exactly the right position on the big, ideological divides of the day, but one of ­“execution and technical capacity”. On the one hand, she points out that many of the unsuccessful candidates spent very little on digital, despite being in the midst of a pandemic.

On the other, she raises the importance of “door knocking” and says the party should be investing in “year-round deep canvassing”. The idea being that by ­having conversations with people and ­actually listening to them, you’re more likely to change their minds and inspire their support.

This sounds a lot like ­common sense, but apparently it’s not something the party establishment has been receptive to hearing. According to Ocasio-Cortez, all but five candidates in swing states declined her support.

Meanwhile, as she points out, black organisers just “doubled and tripled turnout” in Georgia – a supposedly “red state”. So much of what is typically ­agonised over through the lens of grand ideological questions – like the pundits arguing that Biden lost Latino voters for being too ­“socialist” (too what now?) – can actually be explained through the much more simple, human considerations of how seriously you engage with those communities and how well you deliver for them.

There is evidence that most voters do not form their views on given policy issues based around the easy split of “left” and “right” with which the politics-obsessed minority among us are so enamoured. In reality, the spectrum of human opinion is more like the shape of the words ‘Jeremy Bearimy’, and just like in The Good Place, which that bizarre reference is from, people are not so easily categorised as “good” or “bad”. Everyone has the ­potential to change: it’s the job of the people who want to make change happen to actually talk to them.

Sadly, there are many of those in ­power on all sides who don’t, when it really comes down to it, want things to change too much. If they did, you might expect that someone as popular and well-known as “AOC” would be wheeled out by the Democratic leadership at every opportunity as a beacon of hope – hope which so many have clearly found in her election and re-election. The strength of that hope can be calculated at exactly 9.5m dollars’ worth: the amount which her Republican challenger raised on the promise of taking her seat. Talk about being scared.

That she hasn’t been adopted as a ­poster child is as much a credit to her as it is a sad reflection on the party itself. The biggest problem that Ocasio-Cortez causes for centrist Democrats is not that she is ideologically left, but that she is ­serious about organising and mobilising – not just talking.

She was never going to be anyone’s symbol.

Speaking to The New York Times ­following the election, Ocasio-Cortez ­admitted that she considered not running for re-election this time, despite being elected only two years ago, and that the chances of her running for higher office or leaving politics altogether are “about the same”. The reason? A lack of support within her own party.

That is the depressing reality of how the balance of power remains secure. The people who won’t toe the party line and who don’t want to play the game – exactly the people that voters say they want in politics – are worn down by the process until they just give up. This is why “AOC” is important.

Not because she’s the only or the most important person on the American left, or because she alone is the chosen one who will stand against the forces of darkness. But because it has to start somewhere, and the people who want things to stay the same – the people who are gripping on to their “back to normal” dream – will be hoping against hope that it stops ­before it does.