Hello there, my name is Liza Sabater. I am the founder, resident blogdiva and unabashed black Puerto Rican feminist of culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham two of the oldest blogs in the national and New York state political blogosphere. It feels like forever but this December it will be 7 years since I opened culturekitchen as a blog.
I thank Martin for inviting me to this his marvelous front page. I’ve seen many bloggers come and go in my 7 years in the blogosphere and Martin is one of those whom I’ve been blog crushing since his early days at the Great Orange Satan.
With that said, off I go on my first official rant. Let’s talk about Puerto Rico and the popular vote meme, shall we.
The unhinged Lanny Davis had an editorial published on the Wall Street Journal allegedly outlining the rational argument for taking the nomination away from Barack Obama and giving it to Hillary Clinton :
Sen. Clinton has already won the most votes, but there is controversy over including the over 300,000 votes from Michigan, since Sen. Obama was not on the ballot (by his own choice). But if Sen. Clinton wins a substantial victory in Puerto Rico tomorrow – with an expected record turnout exceeding two million voters – she could well end up with more popular votes than Sen. Obama, even if Michigan’s primary votes are excluded.
Oh.
Hell.
To. The. Nah.
The invocation of the “Puerto Rican popular vote” is not an isolated incident. This post is based on one I published yesterday while watching the Rules and Bylaws Committee proceedings on CNN. There they were, with Clintonista in tow, repeating the LIE of how important today’s primary was in regards the popular vote.
The Clintonistas know most US voters have no idea what the political status of Puerto Rico is, nor what the island’s importance or lack thereof is to a general US election. And it’s because of this ignorance –even among most political commentators and newscasters– that they can get away with this kind of crap.
Puerto Rico is not a state. It’s neither a sovereign country. It technically was upgraded by the United Nations from colony to “unincorporated territory”. The “Estado Libre Asociado” or ELA is sometimes translated as “free associate state” but that’s deceiving. Puerto Rico is technically an unincorporated territory with commonwealth rights of the United States.
What does this mean? It means that even though Puerto Ricans are granted rights under the US Constitution, it’s fate as a nation rests at the feet of the US Congress. So yes to citizenship but nay to statehood or sovereignty.
And since we are not a state, there’s that little detail of, you know, of how the US Constitution itself would categorize the island’s “popular vote”. This from Article II, Section 1 :
Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
The state’s are the only ones that can choose a president. Citizens of the United States have no direct say on the matter. Hence the lie of the Puerto Rican popular vote having any impact whatsoever in these elections.
Look, I don’t have an issue with talking about the popular vote in symbolic terms. What is to me outrageous is the outright manipulation of this symbolic vote by invoking the importance of 4.2 million people who have no say whatsoever in who gets to be President of the United States. It’s not only ridiculous but another reason why Hillary Clinton is unfit to the President of the United States.
And on that note, if you can read Spanish, check El Nuevo Dia. It’s the largest newspaper in Puerto Rico and they have a telephone interview with Obama where he “concedes” the island to Clinton and says that the reason why he spent one day in the island was because he’s already campaigning for the general election (oh, snap!).
Better yet.
Clinton was still campaigning there yesterday (!?!?!) and I am going to be so nice to you am going to translate this so you get the sense of egotistical desperation that has sunk this woman’s campaign :
… Hillary Clinton had yesterday a very boricua day of campaigning. She rode through 6 towns on top of an SUV and to the rhythm of reggaeton and Ricky Martin songs.
Ricky Martin, by the way, was one of the few high profile Puerto Ricans to endorse her.
The caravan lasted more than six hours, taking her through Cataño, Toa Baja, Bayamón, Guaynabo, Trujillo Alto, Carolina y San Juan.
The only way they could have done this was by going through the “Carretera #1”, a highway that borders the coast and connects all these towns. I actually lived a stone’s throw away from it in Valparaiso, an urbanizacion that borders Toa Baja, Catano and Bayamon. So I know they can fake their way into all these towns by just driving through this highway and some of the adjacent roads.
It seems though that’s what Hillary Clinton emotionally needed. She’s quoted as saying that it energized her to be in the island because it felt like being at the “Puerto Rican Day Parade”. And I can’t believe she said that … it’s just not gauche to invoke New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in … ahem … Puerto Rico. Yet, and this is where my cold heart softened a bit, she says it’s the most fun she had all through the campaign trail.
Wow.
The article though goes on to say that the “Puerto Rican Day Parade” like event she described was a far cry from what reporters and other attendees witnessed.
… the sidewalks were practically empty and even though members of the campaign reassured [the newspaper] that the caravan contained 200 cars, a member of the press counted only a little over 20. Nevertheless, the candidate received warm welcomes in Toa Baja and Guaynabo where big groups of aproximately 100 people waited for her with t-shirts, posters and banners referring to her, her husband former president Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea.
This primary has become the psychodrama of the Clinton dynasty and it’s telling that it ends in what the United States refuses to call a colony, yet even Puerto Ricans themselves call it the US Congress’ little banana republic. After 8 years of the Bush’s treating the mainland as their own big banana republic, am sure mainlanders will have had enough of that.
Yet after reading this article and seeing the angry desperation of Harold Ickes at the R&BC meeting, I take it that Hillary gets this is the last time she’ll have her say on her own little banana republic parade.
