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.
Welcome aboard. Say hi everyone, and mind your manners.
And Liza, I’m so sick of all the excuses for why Hillary will be the better cnadidate. Considering she has been smearing Obama ever since he became a threat to her I guess she’s right only if you think being a better candidate means being the one willing to use GOP talking points against fellow democrats.
agree on all fronts – welcome aboard and great post. It is interesting that the place she is having “the most fun” is one that gets zero electoral votes.
And to say that being in Puerto Rico with the reception she is getting and the “fun” being like the Puerto Rican Day Parade is like the Seinfeld episode when Kramer says that he saw something from Saks Fifth Avenue and said to Jerry’s visiting parents “the next time you are at the Saks Fifth Avenue in Palm Beach….” to which Jerry replied, “or right here on Fifth Avenue in NYC”.
Or like saying that being in Germany is just like being in Epcot’s version of Germany.
We obviously are not the only ones sick and tired of these lunatics mind games.
ugh.
Enough is enough.
Thanks. I was wondering if H. Clinton could somehow squeeze in votes for herself from her eighth grade class elections to further justify her case.
Her fifty-one-state-of-mind strategy!
Welcome to the pond and thanks for a great diary on the latest Hillary insanity. LOL
Welcome.
A hearty Puerto Rican bravo.
Perhaps a touchy subject…. from a cynical pundit: “But it seems the Puerto Rican votes today were sealed and wrapped in late 1999? with a pardon.”
OH SNAP!
I didn’t even remember that!
You’re talking about what’s his name, the former governor that left in disgrace … not Sila Calderon, the other one.
I have a horrible cold that’s hampering my horrible memory 😛
no. It’s Bill Clinton’s pardon of those renamed terrorists, of PR ancestry who wanted an Independent PR.
welcome liza, and what a perfect day for you to start posting here. There is something a little bizarre about how this campaign is ending with Hillary caravaning around Puerto Rico.
The thing is, I lived in that area and I can tell you, it’s really kind of a sad thing to picture her on top of an SUV in that hot PR weather, waving to the almost empty suburban streets of Puerto Rico.
She probably looked at the perpetual traffic jams and thought they were there to wave good-bye to her.
Oh lord, it gets even more pathetic if I throw out traffic jams into the equation.
😛
ROTFLMAO!!! I can see them now saying get the &%(^ out of the way I am trying to get home and she is waving and grinning.
These days I wake up and say,
“Wow, we dodged a bullet- if it weren’t for this extraordinary Obama guy and his brilliant campaign, Hillary Clinton would probably be our next President.”
Yikes.
Congrats on the gig and my response
nice – a new way to responding to comments.
Much more personalized too 😉
Great point, which I made yesterday elsewhere to some people that just don’t want to care. The reply I got was “it is a virtual tie” (over 5% difference though), and then “it is a ‘primary tie'”.
sigh…….
I DIDN’T KNOW YOU HAD A BLOG!
I thought you were just diarying over at the orange satan and here 🙂
I’ll let you know when I put Disqus on culturekitchen. I have it over at LizaSabater.com but have yet to include it at CK.
Once I have it, you can use Seeismic for commenting through Disqus as well.
🙂
I’ve had that particular blog for almost 3 years now. I have other blogs, but those are very niche and have nothing to do with politics or me, so I don’t talk about them much. I still need to get disqus on my blog too. It’s a lot of fun.
nice piece. but one correction: you mean that it IS gauche for Clinton to invoke New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in Puerto Rico. My lord, I can’t believe she said that either.
There’s something karmically correct in the fact that Ricky Martin is one of Hillary’s few prominent Puerto Rican supporters.
I know!
It’s kind of like … and I hate to use this word … has-beens. Am shocked he’s not for Obama.
Excellent and interesting post. Special thanks for quoting the relevant section of the Constitution. I hadn’t noticed this part before: “no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.”
This is a little confusing, and I think Liza may have misinterpreted it a bit. It refers to the “electors” selected in the final November election. It does not refer to party delegates or the individual parties’ primaries. One of the many defects in our obsolete Constitution is that it doesn’t in any way acknowledge the existence of political parties or provide any means of regulating them, and it doesn’t provide any standards for the nominating processes that parties use to select their candidates. This is left entirely to the states and the parties themselves. So, in fact, the Democratic party is able to allow the citizens of Puerto Rico to participate in the nomination process if they choose. They can’t choose electors in the final election, but anything before that is fair game.
Mikep,
The US Party’s can play the ruse that delegates from Puerto Rico matter and that the popular vote that elects those delegates matters.
The fact is, when all is said and done, the island of Puerto Rico is completely out of the electoral equation.
Politically I can understand playing to that choir. They make money and gain political influence out of it. The truth of the matter is that only the elite that brokers those delegates has everything to gain from this ruse.
The rest of the country? They still can’t vote for the President. It’s just a game.
Hola liza, y bien venida.
First let me freely confess my ignorance. Like too many mainland Americans I know way less about Puerto Rico than I ought to. It seems to me that PR is pretty much in fact if not in law our 51st state and it’s probably past time that law ought to catch up to reality. How do Puerto Ricans feel about statehood? Would they rather be a real state? Would they run completely away from the US if they could? Something in between?
That’ll be the next topic of my post.
The issue is not what they want but how they want it. As our “commonwealth” has been designed, the will of Puerto Ricans is not respected by US Congress on this.
It’s only up to the 50 states to decide what will happen with our situation. And many Puerto Ricans feel that, even if Congress granted them what they wanted it would still be illegitimate because it wouldn’t be an autonomous decision.
It’s part of the reason why there’s been 30 years of efforts into making the UN overturn it’s 1953 decision to declassify Puerto Rico as a colony. It can’t be NOT a colony if Puerto Ricans have no say in it’s political future.
So the issue is not what they want but how they want it.
Welcome and thanks for the great insight .
Given what awaits us with these unauditable voting machines , I fear Hillary mission is simply to alienate enough women voters or create enough of that perception to make rigging the election for McCain look remotely plausible .
“Pissed off Hillary Voters” thus being 2008 Security Mom and NASCAR Dad – media explanation for narrow but surprising McCain victories .
She has a scorched earth policy, there is no question about it.
I wrote in another post that I’ll re-write for her later how all these “angry white women” is a symptom of the unfortunate “white supremacist” within –and it’s something that proves that the foundations of US Feminism are not in social equality and anti-racism.
US feminism has been mainly the struggle of white middle class women to regain what they’ve always seen as their entitlements. It’s this resentment that gets manifested as resentment against black people and especially black men with Obama being the target.
It’s what can only explain pro-choice white women screaming they’ll vote for McCain than Obama.
And it’s what will be at work when some of them will indeed try to steal the elections come November.
Evidently she hasn’t ever talked to her big cash donors living on Fifth Avenue about the Puerto Rican Day parade? I guess not. Anyway, somehow, deep inside, a lot of us are going to end up missing her, you know, the way everyone missed Nixon because he wouldn’t be around anymore to be knocked around. But Mrs. Clinton will never take the same path. She will resurrect. I mean, we’ll miss Mrs. Clnton I after we get to see Mrs. Clinton II between next Wednesday and the Denver conventin, and Mrs. Clinton III between Denver and the GE, and Mrs. Clinton IV after the GE. You might say that we’ve already had Mrs. Clinton I and II as First Lady and NY senator and that we’re now living through the final days of Mrs. Clinton III. I can’t keep track…until she ends up waving and smiling at herself in the mirror.
CNN is calling the island for Puerto Rico but Univision in the island isn’t.
What’s disturbing is that the douchebag, aided and abetted by another douchebag (aka Wolf Blitzer), is claiming that if Hillary wins Puerto Rico she can win Colorado and Nevada.
Figure that one out.
I’ve enjoyed your work for a long time. It’s nice to see you on the front page here.
Hey liza, welcome! Good to see that you will a regular and a front-pager as well.
Welcome Liza! I look forward to more of your posts.
Hello and Welcome Liza with a z. Great first diary and hope to see many more.
Hi, liza. Glad you’re here.
I can only guess that many Puerto Ricans now feel as dismayed and nauseated as we here in the States do. (The states that matter, anyway. Or maybe it’s the states that don’t — all that stuff’s gotten kind of confusing.) And that’s because now, they too have been subjected to that Clinton ’08 special touch. To rip off and paraphrase Bill, Puerto Ricans feel our pain (our pain in the butt, that is — and her name is Hillary!).
I’ve commented on the popular vote meme on several occasions, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that one of my objections is based on the unfair comparison between caucus states and primary states.
An obvious source of confusion for many is the idea of using the popular vote in the general election rather than the electoral college. Although the “one person/one vote” aphorism sounds appealing, the nomination process takes place in a wide variety of contests, some of which don’t draw large numbers of participants — such as caucuses — and some of which include Republicans and unaffiliated voters who aren’t members of the Democratic Party.
The delegate system used by the Democratic Party does give Puerto Rico a voice in its nomination process equivalent to that given the state of Colorado. However, in general, there is no attempt to represent non-Democratic voters when assigning the size of a delegation. The following are the formulas used to calculate delegation size:
Although the logic behind this system is opaque to people who are neither mathematicians nor party officers, there are some very good reasons for using this system.
The system was devised to avoid anomalies that might occur with highly variable nomination contests and participation of voters from outside the party. One problem, among many, is the late contest with low turnout, a consequence of holding the contest after the winner has been decided. It should be noted that avoiding the ‘irrelevant late contest syndrome’ was part of what led to the ‘let’s be early and the hell with the rules and the other states’ infraction by Florida and Michigan, which allows supporters of a candidate to dominate the crucial early stage of the nomination process and — potentially — propel their favorite candidate to the nomination.
This early contest effect can also be intensified through open primaries, contested races and the inclusion of initiatives and referendums in the nomination vote, which is an added reason for not letting single states unilaterally set the nomination calendar.
Another obvious reason for the apportionment formula is the presence of open primaries in which Operation Chaos party raiders boost popular vote totals while at the same time affecting who wins. Open primaries are generally considered a positive step, but late primaries can be victimized by raiders when the Republican nomination race has been settled. Proportional allocation of delegates limits the Republican’s ability to sway the Democratic contest, but the participation rate still swells when compared to other contests. Using the apportionment formula avoids this pitfall.
Another area of concern, which relates to why some caucuses are held, is when a the legislature reschedules the contest and makes it non-compliant. A adversarial legislature or a maverick state bent on increasing its importance can produce this situation, and it happens far more often than people think. The solution to this problem has been to decertify the primary and hold a caucus on a different date, which doesn’t require approval by the state government.
Rather than attempting to institute a national primary, which would require creating a uniform voting system though out the country, it’s far easier to assume that contests aren’t fungible in terms of votes. Some heterogeneity occurs naturally — such as ethnic, economic and geographical diversity — and the candidates are expected to appeal to a broad diversity of voters. A national primary doesn’t allow voters to reflect on previous results, and it might even give a bigger advantage to well funded candidates who derive their funding from special interests. It would also place a premium on shallow, mass market campaigning driven by advertising rather than encouraging the face-to-face interactions of “retail” contests. Candidates have an equal opportunity to compete ‘within’ contests, but comparisons between states run aground when the primary turnout/Democratic voter ratio is highly variable ‘between’ states. The delegate system is mathematically superior, although this fact may seem counterintuitive, and that’s why both parties use similar versions of the same formula.