Florida Vote 2020: A post mortem analysis

[mia]

Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter
"We've seen this movie before."

...James Freeman writing in The Wall Street Journal on November 4, 2020 called the Vice President to task. "Attempting to generate leftist enthusiasm for a listless campaign, Vice President Joe Biden did the country a disservice by partially embracing the radical Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.), rather than appropriately shunning him."

Cuban Americans understood that there is a chasm of difference between a "social-democrat" and a "democratic socialist" such as the self-identified Senator Sanders of Vermont. Social democracy works within the framework of democratic governance and the rule of law. It also recognizes the market as a necessary mechanism for the creation of human riches, but that it should be tempered by regulations and legislation to protect the environment, and seek a society that is more equitable. This movement is popular in Europe and can be seen in action in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and many other places.

Democratic socialism views private markets and capitalism as evils that need to be replaced by a system that achieves public control over the means of production with government control. Maximizing government control over the private sector took place in Nicaragua, and Venezuela through democratic socialism that transitioned into communist regimes that took over the economic private sphere, and began to silence free speech, shut down independent media, and enforce a particular political ideology on students that destroyed the democratic framework of governance replacing it with dictatorship.

The vote for Trump by Cuban Americans had a three fold significance: 1. Punishing Obama-Biden for the failed detente with Castro that they continued to gaslight Cubans as a success doubling its offensiveness. 2. Gratitude for Trump-Pence dismantling the Obama detente and identifying the true nature of the dictatorship. 3. To vote against the Party who had major candidates such as Bernie Sanders celebrating the "achievements" of the Castro regime, and omitting its bloody history.

https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/11/florida-vote-2020-post-mortem-analysis.html

[4Q2u2]

1. I wonder

How Cubans think of North Korea, Russia, and China?

[Quixote1818]

9. That has been my question. Is that what they want????

[Drunken Irishman]

20. Like any Republican, if it doesn't impact them, it doesn't matter.

[4Q2u2]

22. Guilt by Association

The Story States that Cubans were mad at Biden for his embrace of Sanders.
What about the big sloppy kiss trump gave to all of those Great Leaders.

Bottom line is they are full of shit.

[MoonlitKnight]

26. This is the correct analysis

Republicans = I got mine, so f you.

They actually liked the Obama changes because they could visit more often and send more money back to Cuba. They like restricting immigration unless it is Cuban immigrants.

It looks more like white people turned out for trump. Including white women again.

[Mystery sage]

2. In any case they are a lost cause to us.

[FBaggins]

3. Can it be fixed?

Trump received 200k more votes in Miami Dade County this year than in 2016.

If that can't be reversed... Florida is off the table for future statewide candidates.

[PirateRo]

12. The answer to your question is yes

There is a self-reinforcing element to small communities like this. They find comfort and easy of community through a series of trusted individuals. If you introduce education, not indoctrination, but education, and challenge this self-reinforcement by shaming or simply confronting these spheres of influence, you break the cycle.

Remember, these people are from broken communities and families lost over time. They suffered property loss, devastating business loss, especially those that did not expand to include Florida or Brazil or Mexico. There is a lot of resentment still over Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.

Can it be fixed? Sure. In fact, it’s slowly fixing itself. Their children vote less and less the way their parents did. What mystifies me is that the US can be so adept at Voice of America, which is how Cubans got their news for 60 years and yet handle the Cuban-American community so poorly. What also mystifies me is how the Cuban-American community consistently fails to find change within itself and the courage to move ahead. This is a nation that prided itself on being internationalist, of Havana rivaling NYC. Even their constitution and the colors of the flag were based on a US model.

And yet, here we are still having the same failed discussion concerning Cuban-Americans and Florida. The Democratic Party must step up here with an educational outreach like they need to do in all 50 states or, next elections, we will all be the socialist enemy to defeat in the next election. Again.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. Funny though that Biden outperformed everywhere else in the state.

Pinellas, Osceola and most notably Duval (Jacksonville) all went blue, beyond the usual blue counties.

It was that underperformance in Miami-Dade that tripped us up.

[FBaggins]

16. Not everywhere else

Trump won FL in 2016 by 113k. This year looks like it will be around 400k.

About 200k of that was Miami Dade, but the rest of the state combined still improved his gap by another 80k or so.

Unless you mean "outperformed" relative to Clinton in absolute numbers terms - in which case that's probably right.

[geomon666]

5. Oh yeah? Well here's my response to my Cuban American Trump voting neighbors...

go fuck yourselves. That's my answer to you.

When you're out here on the corners and screaming about how your benefits are gone, go fuck yourselves. When you can't see a doctor, go fuck yourselves. When you can't get a loan to fix up your house, go fuck yourselves. When your job is gone and there's no replacement or opportunity for re-education into a new marketplace, go fuck yourselves. To my Miami Beach MAGAts, when you can't drink the water anymore cause it's full of salt from all the flooding, go fuck yourselves.

In other words, to put it plainly, go fuck yourselves.

[idziak4ever1234]

7. You are braver to say out loud what many of us are thinking.

People are dumb who vote against their own best interest no matter who they are.

[geomon666]

8. I saw them when I was shopping yesterday, wearing MAGA hats

I laughed right at em. None of them said a word.

[orwell]

6. People vote on emotion...

...the same way they make most decisions.

Facts, reason, and logic rarely matter.

You believe what you believe, facts be damned.

Biden was not going to win over these Cuban voters. They are reliably Republican.

That is also why a mass murderer got so many votes for president...

[llashram]

10. for the most part

Cuban-Americans have ALWAYS been politically conservative and they give a damn less about any other group anywhere. The Mariel boatlift inspired by an economic downturn in Cuba caused by American embargos against Castro specifically gave us an enlarged Cuban presence in Florida. Russian help for Castro was for political optics only. Russian leaders gave less than a damn about the Cuban's economic woes.

https://cubaonthehorizon.cofc.edu/memories-mariel-boatlift/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/02/most-cuban-american-voters-identify-as-republican-in-2020/

They are, for the most part, RW trump-pets period.

[lapfog_1]

11. cuban americans in florida

are the children and grand children of the Oligarchs of pre-revolution Cuba.

They don't mind dictatorships do long as they are in charge...

We hoped engaging with China would lessen the chance for nuclear war with China... and, eventually, open Chinese society to western economic models.

But for Cuban Americans, we can never do anything other than impose sanctions and attempt to punish a people who supported Castro.

Cuban Americans have always been Republicans... and the worst sort of Republicans. Never forget that it was exiled Cubans that engineered the Watergate breakin for E. Howard Hunt.

We need to win the White House without Florida and normalize relations with Cuba... along the lines of China. In another 2 generations we might start making inroads in the Cuban American latinos in Florida.

[CornbreadJohnson]

15. I tend to agree..

These are the Batista supporters and/or their descendants. The GOP knows this subset demographic because they're cut from the same cloth. They really know deep in their hearts Joe is not a socialist; they go along with the propoganda because it's comfortable and it's lazy thinking. I don't want to imply they are comfortable with fascism although I think they have a huge blind spot for it.. and that's when it creeps up and bites you in the ass.

[JCMach1]

13. Putting my tinfoil hat on for a sec... That was Trump's narrative

Before the election. Given 2016 that makes me hella suspicious.


Miami-Dade uses those over air modem ES&S hackable voting machines.

And don't forget the USPS hack which they did in plain sight



I'll remove it now.

[gopiscrap]

14. fuck all of that

what about the 27% of ballots held by the post office in south Florida that is my analysis

[whopis01]

18. It wasn't just in south Florida

That dark blue swath in the Democratic-leaning I-4 corridor.

[gopiscrap]

23. wow

[rockfordfile]

24. I agree

[mshasta]

17. FloridaRacism

Florida=Greed

[Tommy_Carcetti]

21. Wha?

[Boogiemack]

19. F* off. Biden chooses whom to embrace and we are not out to make enemies of our

friends. And eventually, when a generation of failed embargoists dies out eventually relations with Cuba will be normalized. We have more in common with Cuba than we do with Saudia Arabia, Oman, and the rest of the mid-east. Those who mourn only over the loss of wealth and privilege and ignore babies in cages and support people like Trump are dead to me.

[maxrandb]

25. So, can we expect all those Cuban Americans to give back their Social Security?

The ONLY fucking reason this "socialist" bullshit attack works is because 50% of our corporate media is just fucking lazy, and the other 50% have an agenda to ensure Dems are labeled as "socialist".

Fuck! We've had examples of social government since the fucking founders created the fucking Pony Express.

Every fucking freeway you drive on? A Fucking Socialist Society built it.

Truth be told, Donnie Dipshit and the Retrumplicans are more like Castro than any Democrat.

[ananda]

27. So I wonder where so many Floridians will live..

when their area goes under water?