[T]he Democratic Party is a coalition party with five partners: African American groups, Latino groups, women’s groups, unions and progressive groups. If you’re only one of five factions, maybe one-fourth of the party, you should only expect to win about one-fourth or one-fifth of the victories. You need to work with other groups in the coalition to achieve political success. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose, that’s how life works. Ocasio-Cortez has figured that out, but not all progressives have.
Sean McElwee, progressive activist and founder of Data for Progress, in an interview at POLITICO.
Coalition means you have to work with other groups of people to achieve a common goal. Those who insist on perfection and ideological purity set themselves up for disappointment. If you demand all or nothing in politics you are far more likely to end up with nothing.
As the late civil rights leader Bayard Rustin once wrote:
«[T]he difference between expediency and morality in politics is the difference between selling out a principle and making smaller concessions to win larger ones. The leader who shrinks from this task reveals not his purity but his lack of political sense.» source