Who won the day? Bad Bunny

When megastar Bad Bunny posted a video love letter to the island of Puerto Rico and his 45.6 million followers on Instagram on Tuesday, joyfully rebuking comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s nativist othering of it as a “floating island of garbage,” he elevated the stakes of celebrity intervention in politics.

Culturally and politically, it registered as something more significant than even Beyoncé or Taylor Swift validating Kamala Harris.

Beyoncé and Swift’s endorsements may have come first, and spoke to key constituencies Harris must win. This, though, was on a different plane.

The Puerto Rico imbroglio — and Bad Bunny’s wading into it with days left in the contest — widened the celebrity field to a more diverse coalition reflective of the Democratic Party’s new center of gravity than a James Taylor or even a Bruce Springsteen. He had, of course, already reposted a video of Kamala Harris on Sunday talking about her plan to improve economic opportunities for Puerto Rico and criticizing Donald Trump for resisting hurricane relief to the island.

It also tells a different, more aspirational story about a specific community and a specific issue where Bad Bunny has an authoritative voice. And it has the potential to help turn this into one of the more important moments in Puerto Rican and mainland politics in decades for the five million U.S. citizens identifying as Puerto Rican who live here — including half a million in battleground Pennsylvania.

“We have been fighting since day one of our existence, we are the definition of heart and resistance,” reads a statement in Spanish that Bad Bunny added at the end of the video. “Here we go, here we are, and for those who forget who we are, don’t worry, we proudly remind you.”

If Harris wins, it will be at a historic crest of celebrities seeking to shape the political moment.

But on Tuesday, Bad Bunny won the day.

We ask ourselves every night: Who won the day? Now we’ll tell you — every day. Last night, it was Harris.