I recently watched videos of Bernie Sanders, who americans call left-wing, and maybe compared to other american politicians he is, but compared to russian opposition he is very like Boris Nemtsov and Alexey Navalny. First is literal founder of Union of Right Forces, second is considered to be center-right.
Communism and socialism were heavily demonized for years by the capitalist political machine and their complicit/owned media. Also communist groups in the 20th century were persecuted by the FBI and so forth. As a result, most politicians don’t want to be openly perceived as “socialist” because there’s so much bullshit about it that the average person has no idea what the fuck it means but has a negative association. So, people like AOC and Sanders are the best we can get.
Well they did manage to nominally rehabilitate certain left wing ideologies. Like Libertarianism, turning it on it’s head and making it a tool of the very people actual Libertarians thought against.