Biden wants to re-thaw relations with Cuba. He'll have to navigate Florida politics.

[Judi Lynn]

By
Anthony Faiola and
Karen DeYoung
November 25, 2020 at 3:17 p.m. CST

MIAMI — Stirred by breathless warnings of a socialist menace, Cuban Americans turned out for President Trump in massive numbers. Now those voters are presenting a new challenge for President-elect Joe Biden: How to reembrace the historic Obama-era opening with communist Cuba without ceding Florida to the Republicans in 2024.

On few countries is U.S. foreign policy driven more by domestic politics than Cuba and, to a lesser degree, Venezuela. Exiles and Americans of Cuban and Venezuelan descent who harbor deep antipathy for the governments in those leftist police states helped Trump win this key swing state this month. Trump’s net gains in South Florida’s Cuban community alone, experts say, accounted for as much as a third of the 372,000 votes that cost Biden the state.

But Biden is gambling that a focus on the restoration of flights and remittance privileges removed under Trump — which Miami Cubans have griped about over steaming cups of cafecito — will allow his administration to re-engage Havana without enraging a pivotal electorate. Ultimately, the failure of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns against leftist authoritarians in Havana and Caracas to provoke significant change could help Biden swing the pendulum back toward detente.

On Venezuela, Biden has signaled no change in the sanctions on indictments of top officials, but he has said he plans to focus more on the humanitarian plight of a people suffering under a harsh autocracy. At least in the short term, President Nicolás Maduro is unlikely to enjoy a major break in his international isolation.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/biden-cuba-venezuela-maduro/2020/11/25/5762e044-2abe-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html

(People who've watched the Post over time are aware the Post is virulently hostile toward ALL leftist-led Latin American countries. Don't know what the story is on that. Very peculiar.)

[brush]

1. This can be massaged, especailly by restoring remittance privileges.

[sandensea]

2. A lot of that hostility (from U.S./European press) has to do with big media in Latin America

Most corporate media in Latin America is right-wing, ranging mostly from center-right to quasi-fascist (dictatorship apologists, racists, etc.).

This is because historically, most of the region's newspapers - and the media conglomerates that grew around them (cable news, etc.) - were founded by landed families.

And because the few that dared to have a progressive line were often violently quashed by dictatorships in the 20th century.

Consequently, whenever U.S./European/Asian correspondents reach out to Latin American sources, they're usually right-wing editors and op-ed writers - however "independent" they present themselves as (and they always do).

Being a left-wing - or even centrist - journalist is a good way to end your career in the region. Or worse.

[stopbush]

3. Dems have little or no chance to win Fla in 2024, so why pander to the

Cuban population? Do what’s right, write off Fla as a lost cause and move on.

[ResistantAmerican17]

7. You read my mind. Florida is a waste of democratic energy.

As a victim of living in Texas, I feel that pain. Texas looks blood red without something supernatural, like people actually getting the heck out to vote.

[SmartVoter22]

4. Most Cuban refugees are dying off now

They are old people, in their retirements.

The younger Americans of Cuban descent want relations open. They see far more benefits to trade and tourism, than the revenge on Castro, who is also dead.

Cuban politics is not stuck in a 1963 time tunnel. The world has moved on.

[sandensea]

5. As Steely Dan might put it:

Where the Cuban gentlemen sleep all day.

[FloridaBlues]

6. The Cuban's I work with didn't like the restrictions placed by Trump

They are unable to see thier families and they know the financial stress this has caused thier people. The people I work with are fellow RN's, they have compassion over political issues. I wish more Cuban people felt this way.

[Prof.Higgins]

8. Obama's Cuba "thaw" gifted Florida to Trump TWICE.

Florida's COVID-19 tragedy was out of control worst in Miami-Dade, yet many Cuban-Americans voted for even more casualties in their own families just to take revenge against the Democratic Party for Obama's engagement with Raul Castro's regime. If Biden reckons these Cuban-Americans are permanently lost to the Democratic Party already, then he might as well renew the thaw with Cuba which could benefit some American businesses.