1) Guam, Puerto Rico statehood. D.C. will not happen. But Guam and Puerto Rico? Definitely possible. All the RINO's have more incentive to go Democrat on everything because the Republican's have cut their own throat. If successful, this will lock up the Senate for generations.
Guam will never happen. 170,000 people vs. about 500,000 for the smallest House district. They'd need to triple the number of reps. Puerto Rico is more than large enough, but can the statehood movement overcome the independence movement, and is the US willing to accept a bankrupt state?
The independence movement in Puerto Rico is VERY weak, TBH. We have three traditional political parties based around the island's political status: Pro-Statehood (Partido Nuevo Progresista "New Progressive Party"), Pro-Commonwealth/Status Quo (Partido Popular Democratico "Popular Democratic Party") and Pro-Independence (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño "Puerto Rican Independence Party"). And in my lifetime, the pro-independence party has never gotten more than 5% of the vote. There used to be paramilitary movements, but they got crushed decades ago and they never had broad popular support in my lifetime. They used to be stronger before I was born, but a bunch of them got caught after they tried an actual armed insurrection of the US Capitol (unlike what we saw last week), and it all went downhill from there.
Every time the push for statehood has been stalled, it has been from the pro-commonwealth/status quo side, with zero plans for independence. I've never heard anyone with broad popular appeal lay out some plans that captured the public's imagination about WTF we would do as an independent nation or WTF that government would look like. The dominant forces have always been the pro-statehood party and the pro-commonwealth/status quo party (either of which have won every election in my life), so for as long as I've been alive the fight has never been about statehood vs independence, but about people who want PR to become a state vs people who have NO plans beyond perpetually being a disenfranchised US colony forever. So what really needs to be overcome for PR to become a state (aside from the US gov actually accepting PR statehood) is not the independence movement, but blind, directionless inertia.
Good to have an insider perspective. I was in San Juan during one of your periodic referendums, and there were parades and celebrations and a lot of, for lack of a better word, nationalistic fervor. Probably gave me the impression it was bigger than it really was, though everyone I talked to favored the status quo. Just too many tax and funding benefits, and abstract things like having a vote in national elections weren't as important. Seems to be a slow shift towards statehood over time, though, especially based on the last referendum.
How are the finances? That was covered a lot during the last storm, and most pundits were saying PR would have to get their house in order before statehood could even be considered.
Yeah I'm curious about the current situation post-hurricane etc. What's the scoop?
Edit: My feelings, much like the Guam situation, is that if the Democrat Party wanted to push the issue, I don't think the will of the Puerto Rican people, nor any legal exemptions from Guam becoming a State will matter one iota to the Democrat party while they have both Houses and the Presidency. Coupled with the fact that the Republicans have a herd of Rino's in their ranks that want nothing more than to simp for the Dems, I don't imagine it would be much effort nor even controversial among themselves to make these moves. Vs. say Single Payer etc.
Yeah, that's the thing. Any time you go to a protest in Puerto Rico you're gonna find a lot of nationalistic sentiment, but a lot of those people favor the status quo and vote for the pro-commonwealth party, and for the status quo during referendums rather than for independence. Part of the problem is that the pro-commonwealth party was founded by Luis Muñoz Marín, who was the first Puerto Rican governor elected in the island, one of the people who established the Puerto Rican commonwealth (Estado Libre Asociado, or “Free Associated State”) and a very prominent political figure in his day. And he was such a popular character that older people who were alive in his day and may have had nationalistic sentiment kept voting for his party—which is NOT a nationalistic party—which ended up cementing the pro-commonwealth party’s dominance in the island, along with the pro-statehood party as its main opposition, and completely sidelining the pro-independence party and movement (he also helped suppress Nationalist movements in the island, but that’s another rabbit hole covered in his
Wikipedia page).
And to compound matters further, a lot of the old hardcore nationalistic movements were Marxist socialists anti-Capitalist/US Government types out in the fringes, with the paramilitary types getting aid from Cuba and such, so they all eventually got crushed by the feds. So independence movements never gained much popular support, partly out of fear that Puerto Rico would turn into something like Communist Cuba if it gained its independence (which is something I used to hear a lot growing up as a kid).
Another thing to consider is that every time we get these large protests a lot of the more ardent pro-independence people tend to attend those events, while most of the normal everyday people that don't really care that much about politics just stay at home. So if you talk to the people at the protests you're gonna get a lot of skewed perspectives that don't necessarily match what the average person in the island thinks or wants, because most of the minority pro-independence crowd are gonna be at those events (however, people who attend the protests also tend to be better educated about the issues than the non-political folk, so they might still bring up valid points). But most average people just wanna get through their everyday lives without disruptions and none of them wanna give up their US citizenship.
Ironically, I haven’t been following the situation in the island as closely as I’ve been following US politics or the pandemic, but the situation has been pretty much a bumpy ride since the hurricane, followed by the earthquake (and aftershocks that caused further damage), and now with the pandemic things have pretty much gone to hell, and I have no clue if/when we will ever recover. We had like three different governors in one single term, since the one that was on during the hurricane had to resign due to scandals (mostly about spicy comments made in some chat logs that surfaced, rather than due to his rampant mismanagement of the crisis after the hurricane), the one that followed was annulled due to scandals related to the first one (don’t think he was even allowed to officially become active governor), and the third managed to complete her term, but was unable to secure the nomination to run for governor again. Then the second one of these three governors (Pedro Pierluisi, who has been the target of numerous conflict of interest and corruption allegations) somehow managed to become governor again during the last election, which is a testament to how ineffective and corrupt our government and the two dominant parties are.
However, the last election saw a resurgence of third party candidates, with three of them getting a significant portion of the votes—far greater than at any other time in the island’s history—which is an indicator that the island has been losing faith in the two parties that have been dominant throughout its history as the “Free Associated State”. The one who got the most votes was Alexandra Lúgaro, who got 14.21% and I voted for in 2016, but refrained from voting for this time around, cuz she buys into Intersectionality and had been pushing to get LGBT courses into schools. So I basically sat this one out and stayed at home following the US elections, but with some reservations, since I considered her otherwise to be the best candidate. But I just couldn’t bring myself to vote to bring wokeness into the island in the current political climate. Plus my vote wouldn’t have been enough to make her win anyways, but she current has the most votes of any independent/third party candidate in the island’s history.