What Puerto Rico Can Teach Us About Kamala Harris’s Loss

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Growing up in Puerto Rico, I heard one phrase over and over when the adults in my life talked politics: Quítate tú pa’ ponerme yo. I heard it at family dinners. I heard it at Christmas parties. I heard it in our church’s parking lot. Step out of the way so that I can step in. These adults were complaining that the island’s political system was not working for them. They alternated between putting their faith in the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista and the pro-commonwealth Partido Popular Democrático. Once seated in office, politicians from both parties raided the public coffers and doled out government contracts to their friends; the most urgent issues affecting Boricuas took a back seat to party infighting and power grabs. People were convinced that voting these officials out would finally teach them a lesson. And so they did, replacing one party with the other every four years, undoing whatever policies the previous administration managed to implement to benefit Puerto Ricans.

I felt déjà vu this week as the nation came to terms with the fact that an unpopular convicted felon who was impeached twice and tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election will be president once again. It didn’t surprise me that over the course of just eight years, Donald Trump could win, lose, and then win back the White House. The last time Puerto Rico reelected an incumbent governor, I was just 4 years old. In 1996, pro-statehood governor Pedro Rosselló, whose supporters affectionately called him “The Messiah,” won by what was at the time the largest electoral margin in the history of Puerto Rico. But after a corruption- and scandal-plagued second term, Boricuas soured on him. While Puerto Rico has no term limits on governors, Roselló didn’t seek the seat again. Every person who has reached La Fortaleza since has been a one-term governor — even Rosselló’s son, Ricky Rosselló, who was ousted in 2019 after historic protests followed federal corruption charges against his top officials. Not even current pro-statehood governor Pedro Pierluisi escaped this fate: In the spring, he lost his primary against Representative Jenniffer González-Colón, a pro-Trump Republican who is now set to become the second woman governor on the island.

Trump’s ascent in 2016, though driven by a racist backlash to the nation’s first Black president, felt like a fluke at the time. Voters have only grown more distrustful of institutions since then, and just like back on the island, they’ve been using their ballots to vent their anger and punish those in power. In light of Tuesday’s results, Trump losing in 2020 looks less like voters rejecting his fascist tendencies, his harmful policies, and his chaotic administration. Instead, it seems that Americans ousted him because his administration did not serve them in a moment of crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. And Vice-President Kamala Harris’s devastating loss this time around is a clear rebuke of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy, as exit polls show that anger about inflation and increases in the cost of living and housing pushed large swaths of the electorate toward Trump once again.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Senator Bernie Sanders said in a scathing statement. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Trump’s conviction, his role in the January 6 insurrection, his increasingly vile and violent language, his role in radicalizing a Supreme Court that has done away with fundamental rights — none of it seems to have mattered. Instead, America chose a 78-year-old man obsessed with exacting revenge on his “enemies” and who promises to demolish the institutions that voters feel failed them over the last four years. As my colleague Zak Cheney-Rice writes, “What’s clear is that when people feel like the systems around them are broken, they might just vote for the person who promises to take them apart.” Arguing with those who voted for Trump about all the reasons why he won’t champion working people is fruitless; nothing gets through to disaffected voters who only care about rejecting the person currently in power.

But there’s danger in this approach. As Puerto Rico’s long-standing corruption and financial troubles have shown, electing the opposition out of revenge every four years is not the way to build a better future. Flip-flopping between los penepés and los populares for decades has not made Puerto Ricans’ lives better. Quality of life has nosedived, with schools closing, a crumbling health-care system, and fewer economic opportunities. Both parties had a hand in Puerto Rico’s debt crisis; ongoing corruption; the failures after Hurricane Maria; the privatization of the power grid, which has led to near-daily outages; and giving tax breaks to outsiders that have sped up gentrification and made it harder for Boricuas to stay on the island.

I’m heartened by the fact that, while González-Colón won the gubernatorial race back home, a third-party “alliance” with pro-independence candidate Juan Dalmau at the helm came in second place with more than 360,000 votes. For most of my life, Alianza’s success would have been an unthinkable feat, given that the pro-independence party barely cracked single digits in every election until 2020 (and even then managed to win only 14 percent of the gubernatorial vote). But Dalmau presented a clear progressive plan that spoke to voters — many, like me, from younger generations who have only known an island in crisis — fed up with the two-party system. His showing in the election took organizing and coalition building. It took understanding voters’ disenchantment over the economy, over the constant power outages, over the mass exodus of loved ones relocating to the States for a higher quality of life. And it took channeling all that heartbreak into a forward-looking vision, with the promise of a Patria Nueva — a new homeland — that serves all Puerto Ricans. Voters across the U.S. voiced similar anger and pain on Tuesday night. For all of our sakes, I hope that Democrats, and anyone interested in forming a more perfect union, will actually listen to them.