Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fancies herself as the leader of the Democrat Party.
Not everyone is on board.
And AOC was humiliated by a Texas Democrat for one reason she never expected.
Texas Democrat Crushes AOC's Woke Language
Grammy-winning Tejano musician Bobby Pulido is running for Congress in Texas's 15th District as a Democrat.
And he just embarrassed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on national television.
Pulido appeared on CNN to discuss his congressional campaign when host Audie Cornish brought up the term "Latinx."
She played a clip of AOC defending the made-up word that only 4% of Latinos actually use.
"Well, I mean, I don't speak like that. And the people down here don't speak that way, and that's not anything offensive to her," Pulido said.
"But let's be honest, you know, New York is the East Coast…. And maybe those areas, they do talk like that, but not down here."
The congressional hopeful delivered the knockout punch.
"Nobody in their average everyday life speaks like that. That's just a fact," Pulido stated.
AOC's Woke Language War Backfires Spectacularly
The numbers reveal just how out of touch AOC and her progressive allies are with actual Latino voters.
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that only 47% of Latino Americans even know what "Latinx" means.¹
Think about that — after years of progressive activists and coastal elites pushing this term, more than half of Latinos have never heard of it.
The numbers get worse for AOC's cause.
Only 4% of Latinos actually use the term to describe themselves.²
That number hasn't budged since 2019, when it was 3%.
Even more damning — Pew Research found that 75% of Latinos believe "Latinx" should not be used at all.³
A separate 2021 Democratic poll by Bendixen and Amandi International revealed that 40% of Latino voters find the term "Latinx" offensive or bothersome, and 30% said they'd be less likely to support a politician who uses it.⁴
You'd think those numbers would wake up Democrats like AOC.
Instead, she's doubled down.
AOC went on a "mini-rant" in 2022, attacking fellow Democrats who opposed the term.
"And it's almost like it hasn't struck some of these folks that another person's identity is not about your reelection prospects," she said in an Instagram video.
That's rich coming from someone whose woke language obsession is costing Democrats actual Latino votes.
Even Democrats Know AOC Is Toxic
U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, banned the term from official communications in his office.
"When Latino politicos use the term it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use," Gallego said in 2021. "It is a vicious circle of confirmation bias."⁵
That's the real scandal AOC won't acknowledge.
"Latinx" wasn't created by Latinos — it was invented by coastal white progressives who decided they knew better than actual Hispanic Americans how to speak their own language.
The term completely ignores the grammatical rules of Spanish, where gendered nouns are fundamental to how the language works.
But AOC and her fellow progressives don't care about that.
They're more interested in imposing their gender ideology on communities that never asked for it.
Bobby Pulido is running in a district that voted for Donald Trump by 18 points in 2024.
The Rio Grande Valley has moved hard Right as Trump made historic gains with Latino voters.
Trump won 55% of Texas Latinos in 2024 — a 14-point swing from 2020.⁶
He carried all four Rio Grande Valley counties, including 97% Latino Starr County, which went Republican for the first time since 1896.⁷
Democrats running in competitive districts have figured out what conservative voters knew all along.
The Language Police Are Driving Voters Away
AOC's obsession with policing language has become a millstone around the neck of every Democrat trying to win in a swing district.
Pulido knows he can't win his South Texas district if voters think he's another woke progressive from New York telling them how to talk.
"My district is pretty much all oil and gas, and these are jobs that in many cases in these rural areas are the best paying jobs that people have seen in years," Pulido told CNN.
"And so, you know, I think you got to have a candidate that represents the district. And my district is very different than New York, extremely different."
That right there is the problem for Democrats nationwide.
AOC represents a deep-blue district in New York City where progressive activists dominate.
She thinks the rest of America wants to embrace her radical agenda.
The 2024 election results proved she's dead wrong.
Latino voters abandoned Democrats in droves, particularly Latino men who rejected Kamala Harris by massive margins.
Trump didn't just win Latino men — he crushed Harris among them by 29 points after Biden won that group by 10 points in 2020.⁸
That's a 39-point swing in four years.
Democrats can blame the economy or immigration all they want.
But voters are sick of being told by coastal elites like AOC to change their language, embrace gender ideology, and apologize for their traditional values.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is completely toxic, and every word that comes out of her mouth drives voters straight into Donald Trump's arms.
Even her own party knows it.
They're just too afraid to say it out loud.
¹ Marc Tamasco, "AOC eviscerated by Texas Dem congressional candidate over use of term 'Latinx,'" Fox News, December 3, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ "AOC rips Dem lawmakers who refuse to use term 'Latinx,'" Washington Times, June 7, 2022.
⁵ "AOC Blasts Fellow Democrats for Resisting Term Latinx," Mediaite, June 6, 2022.
⁶ Jasper Scherer, Zach Despart, and Berenice Garcia, "Trump's near sweep of Texas border counties shows a shift to the right for Latino voters," Texas Tribune, November 6, 2024.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ "Texas Latinos voted for Trump. Will they keep voting Republican?" Houston Chronicle, November 8, 2024.
