Fidel Castro officially retired today, leaving his brother Raúl in charge of Cuban affairs. Steve Clemons has some thoughts on what it could mean for the American elections. As he notes, Obama’s position on Cuba has been superior to Clinton’s for some time. The U.S. should take this opportunity to offer an olive branch to Cuba by lifting all travel restrictions to and from Cuba. The lifting of all other sanctions can be negotiated out in short order if Cuba is willing to meet a couple of demands (release of its political prisoners, for example).
The Bush administration could actually score a lasting foreign policy success story by declaring our war with Cuba over. Will they ever do anything right? If not, concern over the Miami vote could turn Cuba into a hot potato issue in the presidential campaign. But, for once, the Cuban vote is split and the Dems are showing new boldness in South Florida:
Annette Taddeo, a Colombia-born business executive, told The Miami Herald Saturday she will challenge Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for her seat in the U.S. Congress.
”I think voters are hungry for new leadership and they have a chance to change the Bush-Lehtinen approach, which has obviously failed us,” said Taddeo, 40. “I’m confident the voters will choose a new direction and that I will win.”
Taddeo’s move adds the last piece to a high-stakes Democratic Party election-year strategy to unseat the three incumbent South Florida Republican Cuban-American lawmakers: Lincoln Diaz-Balart, his brother Mario and Ros-Lehtinen.
Raul Martinez, the former Hialeah mayor, announced his candidacy against Lincoln Diaz-Balart on Jan. 22; Joe Garcia, the Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairman and Cuban-American National Foundation member, announced his run against Mario Diaz-Balart last week.
Taddeo’s bid is a long shot. She has never run for office and is going against a well-funded congressional leader with a recognized ”brand-name” — the first Cuban American and first Hispanic woman in Congress.
”Democrats are testing their hypothesis that there may be a shift happening in the Cuban community, and overall Democrats are trying to put as many House races in play as possible across the country,” said Nathan Gonzales, political editor for the prestigious Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. “But Ms. Taddeo is still a long way from proving that this is even a second-tier race.”
Taddeo is undaunted. In a telephone interview, she said South Florida voters “are yearning for change.”
That is three Cuban Republican congressional seats the Dems are challenging, and we can win all three of them.
I promise that if you give me a job at the New York Times I will always do a better job than this.
who read David Brooks during the day to keep himself “located in reality.”
Reality? David Brooks is reality-based?
David Brooks is an utter waste of time and space – a Club For Growth computer program could have penned the same tripe cheaper.
for both himself and for those exiles who wanted to see some kind of grand exit a la Chile’s Salvador Allende, but with a twist: his innards presented to the world on a pike.
Getting old, without your faculties or drive: that’s life’s bitter revenge on Castro. Not the Americans. I think that he and his brother thought that they had all the time in the world. They blew chances to keep the revolution alive in several generations. It is alleged they got involved in the drug trade. If anything, the revolution survives in his social and health programs. Black Cubanos especially owe a lot to him (his mulatto mother was reputed to be a witch). But his human rights–including gay rights–stances suck big.
I hope that Raul is pragmatist enough to start bringing Cuba back into the real world, allowing the younger generation of socialists and Castroists to run things, freeing some political prisoners. Because that crew in Florida–they only know about running Cuba in the 1950s, not now. That era is fucking dead, just like Castro nearly is. And if they try coming back there to take over things, they’re going to find a rude awakening.
If there isn’t a Caesar’s Palace in Havana by 2018, I’ll eat my hat.
Surely you’ve seen the clubs in “The Godfather.” Havana was the playground of the mob, and of course the mob was the main influence in the horrifying way we tried to keep the dictatorship into power during the revolution. If the mob hadn’t bought the U.S. government then, we might have responded a little more graciously when Castro first came to the US for help–and not sent him to the Soviets in a fit of pique. The rest is history.
n/t
for Castro. He’s the last of the adults to leave the world stage. Think Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, and Putin. They all look and act like schoolboys. Viva Fidel. To hell with those right wing wackos from South Florida who like to see themselves on C-SPAN.
If Bush doesn’t act on this and start negotiations with Cuba, he is a fool. What am I saying, he is a fool, so he probably won’t, even though this could be his great Legacy Item for the history books.
Both Obama and Dodd have been way ahead of the curve on this for a while. Hillary has been afraid of this issue, just like Bill and every other president has been forever.
Some older people might be a bit stunned by starting negotiations with Cuba but people under 40 would probably be really excited about this opportunity. It’s a win-win for Cuba and the US from my point of view. This hard-headed and ineffective attitude toward our neighbor has always bothered me. I realize there have been some disagreements, but if you don’t talk your problems out with your family members, you are just left with a broken and miserable family.
Lift the travel ban. Lift the money transfer restrictions. Lift the pharmaceutical trade ban. Lift the agricultural trade ban. And set some immediate human rights DEMANDS. Then once they’ve met some longer term conditions like their people being able to negotiate their own pay and organize unions and such, we can go ahead and open up all trade.
The older generation has been promised the money to go home. They hope to get it by getting their depleted sugar plantation lands repurchased at outrageous rates to “save the Everglades”–a biological impossibility, after 40 years of abuse.
Any wavering would lose the votes of these folks. Their children are already seeing that they’ve been used. Any money for Little Havana’s crumbling schools? I drive through there every week, and it’s a crime and a travesty. Instead of promising “return” they should be educating those children NOW.
The “historicos” who have been waiting for this day for years (on the promise of return money from the Republicans) may be sadly disappointed today. Declare the “war with Cuba” over? You’ve got to be kidding! It’s not a war, it’s a tool.
After four decades, the people of Cuba have no inclination to become the next Iraq. In fact, our fiasco of reconstruction in Iraq is the best example of why they should not associate with us. And there are, of course, two more reasons why they will never turn north. They have been swamped with European and Canadian tourists for at least 20 years. Those tourists have provided a one-sided view of American imperialism which hasn’t been pretty recently. It would have been so much better if Americans had been allowed to visit. (We really aren’t that bad in person!)
And finally, there’s that festering sore of Guantanamo on their soil. What an example of American democracy, to use to lure them back.
Watch the celebrations today. Most of the dancers will be geriatric, and most are destined to be pretty disappointed in the next few months as a new transition government gets elected and it becomes apparent that one man’s resignation and eventual death won’t change the country.