There's some overlap, but I was referring more to the distinction between say...
Example of #1 - fabrications:
Democrats push for vaccine mandates
- Fringe Rep/Cons suggest that it's some sort of evil globalist agenda, or about how it's "democrats wanting use covid to implement socialism"
Example of #2 - real policy, but exaggerated to reductio ad absurdum:
Democrats want universal background checks and want firearm registration
- Rep/Cons spinning it as "They're going to try to take everyone's guns away, and registration is purely for the reason of confiscation!"
Example #3 - things they see in other parts of the country, that they don't want for their own locale:
Progressive educators in NYC using the The 1619 project as history class material, and
having a "Transgender Awareness Immersion Week" in 3rd and 4th grade classrooms, or having Kindergarten assignments instructing 5-6 year olds to write letters to the Cleveland Indians asking them to change their mascot.
- People living in the midwest and south (both republicans and democrats) saying
I'm not comfortable with that, I don't want that here
Democrats like Jacob Frey (Mayor of Minneapolis) found out the repercussions of "doublespeak"/"the semantic game" when he got booed for saying he didn't want to "actually" defund the police.
The NY Times ran the video of how that played out for him
Video: Minneapolis Mayor Booed Out of Rally
That's what happens to politicians when they don't really support the radical cause, but are afraid to explicitly reject it out fear of "offending the wrong group".
They probably do like the pro-labor parts, which is why democrats like Jim Webb and Tim Kaine got elected in Virginia as Senators. They'd even probably go for Bernie Sanders.
They did an interesting town hall with Bernie Sanders where he sat down with Trump voters, and they were surprisingly receptive to him, and some even said they originally supported him, but once the DNC backed Hillary as their horse, they switched to the Trump team.
But I don't think it's fair to lump Bernie & AOC in together...they share a lot of overlap on economic ideology, but as you drift into some of the more "modern" social aspects and rhetoric, I think you'd find that they sort of diverge.