Hillary Clinton Wins Meaningless Victory in Puerto Rico

[Dr Ron]

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=3342

Hillary Clinton Wins Meaningless Victory in Puerto Rico

June 1st, 2008 by Ron Chusid

Hillary Clinton won big in Puerto Rico. Joe Klein puts it in perspective:

A Stockdale moment: What am I doing here? (Answer: I’m joining the Clinton traveling press for the last day of campaigning in South Dakota tomorrow.) But, really, what are we doing here? The Puerto Rico “primary” is a crypto-democatic act: We are selecting delegates who will be able to vote at the Democratic Convention even though they won’t be able to vote in the general. At last, a political event even more ridiculous the Iowa Republican straw poll–at least, Iowans can vote in November.

And yet, there’s Terry McAuliffe bloviating on CNN about how this adds to Clinton’s popular vote “victory”–a victory only if you count states that violated party rules (Florida), didn’t have Obama’s name on the ballot (Michigan) or aren’t even states (Puerto Rico).

This sort of thing is just plain annoying, and divisive. The impotent ferocity of the Clinton campaign over the past month has done neither herself or Barack Obama much good. I suspect the Clinton campaign will be over in a matter of days….and then, I believe, the onus will be on Clinton to initiate the reconciliation process. More on that later…

When Hillary Clinton’s argument to the superdelegates comes down to bragging about a victor in Puerto Rico, you know her campaign is really over.

[Dr Ron]

1. Update

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=3342

Update: Andrew Sullivan posts this comment written by a someone from Puerto Rico:

I’m a Puerto Rican reader and I currently live in PR after living a good chunk of my adult life in the US. I’ve been following the primaries in the US closely. I studied in the States, have a masters degree. Out of my very highly educated friends, I’m the only one who’s paying attention to what’s going on in this election year in the US.

You cannot use Puerto Rico as a basis for explaining any phenomenon in the US.

We are a colony. We do not participate in any of the US political processes, really. There isn’t a general understanding of US national politics, nor of the “Republican” v. “Democrat” mentality. We are consumed by our local politics and whether we should become a state, an independent country or remain as we are.

Clinton’s victory here means nothing. There’s a lot of name recognition and her husband is a rock star here. That’s it. Don’t extrapolate the results into anything. We are not Latinos in the same way that Mexican Americans are Latinos. Our vote has nothing to do with Obama’s “problem” with Latinos. Anyone trying to frame the PR vote into anything other than name recognition, has no knowledge of PR at all and is, in short, full of it.