So admittedly I may have responded a little strongly to your post yesterday; I read it at not the best time for me to personally be seeing somebody downplaying his bullshit. A few things though:
AOC is constantly used to make some kind of "both sides" post and it's clumsy or just wrong almost every time. Yes, she's good at Twitter but she is not a troll. You can think she is an idiot or disagree with every position she has but show me where she has ever compromised herself in order to troll the opposition. She uses Twitter to advocate for her principles, even when she'll happily lean into a "brutal twitter takedown" headline. That isn't Ted.
I'm not really interested in a leaders vs. representatives argument but I think you are way off base. What matters is the part in bold. Tons of people do look to elected officials to be leaders whether they should or not. Maybe it's because people are stupid (and lots of them are!), maybe it's because they are naïve, maybe it's because they are lemmings. No matter the reason they do and it's a responsibility. Ted Cruz has never once taken that responsibility seriously and during a pandemic as a US Senator in a state the size of Texas that has real consequences. Fuck him.