“In all of my years organizing and a lot of my academic work - or most of it - is around racialization that Latinos have in the US,” Clemente, the vice-presidential running mate of 2008 Green Party US presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, told show hosts Michelle Witte and Bob Schlehuber.
“Simply put, there’s 60 to 62 million of us, mostly Mexican, then Central Americans and then the Spanish-speaking Caribbeans including Puerto Rico, and you can really see it play out right now. Nobody ever addresses Puerto Ricans. … We can’t vote in Puerto Rico, but we can vote once we’re here as migrants from Puerto Rico,” Clemente explained.
“Puerto Ricans essentially are the swing vote in Florida, and they are the swing vote as well in Pennsylvania,” she pointed out. “There’s more than 1.5 million Puerto Ricans in Florida - more than Cubans, Venezuelans - but the only campaign that went to talk to many of the Puerto Ricans was [US President Donald] Trump and his team."
“I think the other false narrative is that Latinos are not politically diverse,” Clemente added, also noting that the US Democratic Party has to engage with Latino voters, especially in swing states.
“Politically, just for wanting to win, they [the Democrats] made a critical mistake. We have the highest turnout rate … The Puerto Rican electorate on the island itself, which also voted yesterday - we have the highest turnout rate. We vote at an 85% rate in all the elections in Puerto Rico,” she pointed out.
“A lot of us have been sounding the alarm,” she added, noting that it doesn’t make sense to consider an “amorphous group of 60 million people” as one category.
Clemente also noted that it’s time for the US to evolve beyond the current two-party system.
“Hopefully, this might be the only thing you can glean out of this [election]: that young people will not only be part of getting rid of the Electoral College but will also no longer be dependent on the Democratic Party,” she added.