Winning the Primary to Lose the General, AOC Style

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

 

In an infamous but oblique criticism of Donald Trump’s approach to campaigning, Jeb Bush told a Republican audience in 2015 that a GOP presidential nominee had to be willing to “lose the primary to win the general” election. That didn’t work out for Bush — perhaps due, in part, to the fact that he refused to say who he was talking about and ran away from the obvious context of his own remark.

 

There was wisdom in the former Florida governor’s admonition against flattering the pretensions of the unrepresentative primary electorate at the expense of a candidate’s appeal to the broader universe of American voters. Joe Biden proved the wisdom of Bush’s insight in 2020, as did several Republican candidates for high office during the 2022 midterms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t gotten the memo.

 

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that extended well into the early hours of Wednesday, AOC engaged in a testy exchange with her Republican counterparts, producing what her supporters see as a defining rhetorical movement.

 

In a display of contempt for Robert’s Rules of Order, the congresswoman from New York repeatedly declined to abide by the chair’s observation that the “lady is out of order.” Ocasio-Cortez postured defiantly, turned directly into C-SPAN’s cameras, and pledged that she would “not yield.” Why? Because she believed she had been maligned by a colleague who accused her of grandstanding for the benefit of the television audience — an accusation confirmed by her subsequent conduct.

 

But then came the line that is sure to torment us for the remainder of AOC’s political career: “I will not yield to disrespectful men.”

 

Prepare yourself now. You will be privy to a contrived public relations campaign that elevates this remark to a near-mythological status. You’ll see it on t-shirts, buttons, and banners. Among those who outsource critical thinking faculties to politicians, it will become an all-purpose rejoinder on social media. The left will take it for granted that the repost represents a liberative call to action — an assault on the patriarchal artifice that keeps American women from realizing their full potential.

 

We can also assume that, because this comment is likely to resonate with left-leaning women, it will serve her well in Democratic politics — if only because so many men have fled the Democratic firmament that youngish, progressive women enjoy outsize power over the Democratic Party’s political evolution. Given the tantalizing indications in early Democratic presidential primary polling that suggest AOC would be rewarded if she passed on a bid for U.S. Senate in favor of the White House, she may conclude that the sentiments into which she tapped are a vehicle she can ride all the way to a nominating convention. Ocasio-Cortez might be right about that. But she’s also likely to discover too late that the millions who fled from Democratic politics over the last four years did so, partly, because of their allergy to the balkanizing identity politics to which the progressive left is partial.

 

That’s where Jeb’s admonition comes back to haunt the GOP. He was wrong as it related to Trump, and not just because the president’s style was more relatable than the professional political class recognized at the time. Sometimes, the opposition serves up a stinker of a nominee. Their opponents can step on as many rakes as they like and still be rewarded with victory.