Florida Dems in uproar after Sanders' Cuba comments [View all]

[highplainsdem]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/24/florida-dems-uproar-sanders-cuba-comments-117213

As a swing state, Florida is traditionally more moderate than Sanders’s brand of progressivism. No major party candidate nominee here has ever called himself a socialist, nor has one been as critical of Israel, which could be problematic in the March 17 primary because 70 percent of Florida’s estimated 600,000 Jewish voters are Democrats.

In Florida, the concerns with Sanders are particularly acute in the Jewish- and Hispanic-heavy southeast, notably the Miami-area, a liberal bastion that a Democrat needs to carry by big margins to win the state. Top Florida elections are often decided by about a percent or less, making small shifts in the electorate loom large on Election Night.

Sanders’s positions on Latin America could be the most problematic in a general election. If leads to defections to Trump or low Hispanic turnout, it could make a material difference In a state where Latinos account for more than 17 percent of the registered voters.

Florida doesn’t have a single Latino community. It has immigrants and exiles from multiple Latin American countries where “socialism” is a loaded term. When Sanders says he wants to lead a “revolution,” it sounds like “revolución!” to many in South Florida who fled Castro and other leftist regimes. Sanders’s supporters have even earned the nickname “Sandernistas,” a play on Sandinistas, the socialist guerillas who overthrew the right-wing Samoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.

Much more at the link, including info on polling.