“What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
The point of Bernie or AOC or Zohran or any socialist candidate is the movement behind them, which represents the will of the masses. The actual figurehead is largely irrelevant because everything they do is in the interest of their constituents. They might use their charisma to win (but usually it’s the movement that actually wins the campaign), but once they’re in power they just have to fulfill their promises, and they have staff to do this.
A regular politician, by contrast, enacts the will of the corporate class. In this way they’re mostly irrelevant too.