US Hostility Toward the Island was Never Really About the Cold War: America’s Cuba

[Bagsgroove]

2. It was about Florida, not the Cold War

During and after the American Revolution a great many Tory sympathizers fled to Canada. Imagine that, 1) Canada was a world superpower of the day and, 2) those American-Canadian exiles became an extraordinarily powerful political lobby in a way that could swing national elections in Canada. Now imagine that the price the American Tory exiles wanted in order to throw their support to particular Canadian politicians was that Canada try to overthrow of the new American government, or at least to "destabilize" the weaker United States with a crippling embargo.

Over the last half century the Cuban exile community has had the money and power to tip the balance in elections in Florida. And Florida elections are about a lot more than Florida politics. Florida is a crucial swing state with 29 electoral votes. Have you noticed that in the final weeks before any recent presidential election both candidates seem to be on a constant shuttle flight between Ohio and Florida? Every politician in America who hopes to become president has felt the need to crank up the anti-Castro rhetoric in order to win Florida.

Obama's move was not only the right thing to do, it was a political recognition that the influence of that first-generation of angry Cuban exiles in Florida is not as powerful as it used to be.