The 'Defensive Crouch' Is Always Self-Defeating
The electoral results from Florida show that Democrats have gained nothing from perpetuating failed policies, and they had nothing to lose by abandoning them earlier.
The Republican Party fared worse than expected in the midterm elections overall, but in Florida their candidates won by wide margins. Both Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis won landslide victories, confirming Florida’s transformation into a reliably Republican-leaning state. The latest Democratic failure after similar drubbings in the previous three elections prompted several analysts to see an opportunity for the Democrats to make some long overdue changes in U.S. Cuba and Venezuela policies. Stephen Wertheim asked:
If any Democrats still think it makes sense to fruitlessly embargo the island of Cuba into submission until the end of time, in order to gain an insufficient number of votes in a red state, could you please explain why?
Greg Brew was thinking along the same lines:
One takeaway from last night: Dem support for economic warfare against Cuba and Venezuela no longer makes a ton of sense, from an electoral politics standpoint. Might start to see changes there.
Matt Duss saw the same opening, and suggested it might expand beyond policies for this hemisphere:
FL going full red can enable Dems to stop pandering to hawkish conservatives on Latin America, Mideast policy.
I agree that Democrats should support overhauling these bankrupt policies. Then again, they should have been doing that all along. The electoral results from Florida show that they have gained nothing from perpetuating failed policies, and they had nothing to lose by abandoning them earlier. The Biden administration was terrified of making significant changes to Venezuela policy for the last two years because they feared the political consequences any change might have for Democrats in Florida. In the end, they made no changes and they still got crushed. If they can’t learn to stop pandering to hardliners after this, I’m not sure what it would take to persuade them.