It is absolutely true that the Democrats vastly over promised and talked the talk that they never intended to back up to score quick points in 2020. When every blue city mayor is talking about police defunding in 2020 and then running on “tough on crime” again in 2021 or 2022 for re-election, the cynicism in their fake politics, while obvious to everyone here, is especially apparent to voters. All the things they brought up that are only brought up in election years (student loan forgiveness, reparations, increased social services like childcare, literally anything climate related) as well as things they only brought up post 2020 summer BLM events (defunding police, alternative justice systems, etc.) were things that resonated with left leaning voters, even left leaning libs.

But now that reaping is over and it comes time to sow, the left leaning voters are disillusioned and disappointed, and the right wing Democrats who’ve always whined about the need for bipartisanship are blaming the promises, and not the failure to deliver.

All of this is relevant because the squad is nothing but a media narrative created to quarantine these kinds of idealistic political goals to a single vastly outnumbered group. Because they (with various exceptions) continue to push for the more left leaning political goals while the rest of the Dems do their normal post-election pivot to the right, they are left holding the bag. So all the blame on the promises (rather than failure to deliver) goes on the squad (rather than everyone who failed to support the policies).