US-Cuba Relations: "La Revolución" How Cuban-Americans Could Play a Key Role in the 2020 US Election
Image Source: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/anti-castro-cuban-american-lawmakers-see-a-champion-in-trump/31058/
By: Tommy O’Donnell
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.
Havana ooh-na-na. It’s not just a cute and quirky Camila Cabello song, but indeed the epicentre of a country which is still a mystery to many: Cuba. Where the U.S. government may be described technically as a ‘federal presidential constitutional republic’ or the British a ‘unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy’, Cuba’s can be described as a ‘unitary Marxist-Leninist one-party socialist republic’. Or, to put it in simpler terms, a socialist dictatorship. But what relation does Cuba and its government have with the 2020 U.S. presidential election? Well, one of the U.S.’s most populous states is Florida: the land of theme parks, swamps and Cuban refugees and migrants. As a result, the votes of Cuban-Americans are essential in securing the state’s imperative 29 electoral college votes.
For those unfamiliar with the electoral system in America , it is a centuries-old concept called the ‘Electoral College’, which instead of valuing the votes of each individual, values the votes of each state. Every state is granted a certain number of ‘electoral votes’ correlating to the number of U.S. Senators (every state has two) and U.S. Representatives (decided based on population). A state could have a 50.1%-49.9% split, but 100% of the state’s electoral votes would go to the candidate with 50.1% (I’m looking at you, 2000 election).
Florida is a traditional ‘swing state’, meaning that in every election no-one really has any idea to whom the state’s valuable and numerous electoral votes will go. In other words, everything is up for play in Florida, and the candidate chosen by each party is very important. This is where we link together Florida, Cuba, and “la revolución”, and the link’s name is Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont and candidate for President of the United States.
You all know his name. You all recognise the crazy white wisps atop his head, and his New York-accent tinted rallying cries of revolution. He is a divisive figure amongst the so-called ‘Democratic party establishment’ and although much of this division simply boils down to ideological differences (Sanders is a proud democratic-socialist), much of it may be warranted when looking at the larger picture.
The Democrats have a very simple goal moving into the 2020 general election: to defeat Donald Trump, and as a result much of the discussion around the Democratic primaries have focussed on ‘electability’. Who can really win the votes of battleground states over the President and secure a Democratic victory? All of the candidates have different arguments as to why they are the most electable: Joe Biden believes he can overwhelmingly win the African-American vote after eight years by Barack Obama’s side; Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar believe their midwestern roots and moderate, centrist policies can win back the traditionally Democratic ‘rustbelt’ states won by Trump in 2016; Elizabeth Warren believes her fleshed out, financed “I’ve got a plan for that” campaign can persuade voters to trust her.
Bernie Sanders, however, has a unique plan: increase voter turnout amongst young people and people of colour in order to overwhelm the older white vote, which traditionally and typically swings towards right-leaning candidates — not excluding those who wear red baseball caps to hide the lining of their toupé. It is a plan we have seen work before; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or ‘AOC’, the first-term congresswoman for New York’s 14th congressional district finds herself in this position thanks to her extremely successful 2018 campaign which challenged a very senior D.C. Democrat (white, older, etc.) in a primary upset which saw her rise to overnight stardom and political influence no-one could have ever imagined. But again: what on Earth does this have to do with Cuba!?
The Hispanic population in the United States is the most rapidly growing amongst all ethnicities, and as a result the country is forecast to become majority-minority by the year
2045, meaning the majority of citizens will be any ethnicity other than white. However, it is a mistake to think of Hispanic Americans as all the same, and that their votes are winnable by using one blanket strategy. Due to factors such as historical events and geography, each part of the U.S. is home to Hispanic communities of varying nationalities. For example, the U.S.-Mexico border in California, Texas and New Mexico means that the majority of these states’ Hispanic population are Mexican or of Mexican descent. As a result of the Spanish-American war and the invention of air travel, many Puerto Ricans settled in New York City, specifically boroughs like the Bronx. As mentioned earlier, the Cuban Castro regime caused many Cubans to flee to the U.S., and due to its geographical proximity, specifically Florida.
This is where we finally bring together the random concepts discussed so far in this article. Bernie Sanders consistently calls for ‘revolution’ in the United States, a call which may not be embraced by Cuban-Floridians, many of whom fled from Cuba during and after the Revolution in the 1950’s, or are their direct descendants. Of course there are many more factors which contribute to how Cuban-Americans cast their votes, but it certainly doesn’t help when Senator Sanders compliments aspects of the regime many chose to escape from. In recent weeks, Sanders’s praise of the Castro regime’s literacy projects have come under fire, as education was a tool used by Castro in order to cement his Revolution’s success. Although children did successfully learn how to read and write, this was done using Marxist-Leninist ideology; for example, when remembering letters of the alphabet, C was for Castro, and F for Fidel. Sanders’s comments seem to idealise certain aspects of Cuba’s successes without understanding or explaining the full picture. Cuban artist Tania Bruguera sums it up with this quote: “yes, they taught us to read and write, and then they forbade us to read what we want and write what we think”.
But is there any evidence to suggest that Bernie Sanders’s ideology and comments are actually off-putting to Cuban-Americans in Florida? Unfortunately for the senator, the polling data is not particularly favourable towards him (bearing in mind that polling data is not always
reliable). When looking at both primary polls and general election polls in Florida, Sanders does not fare well. Although amongst Democrats he is the national frontrunner with a fairly wide margin ahead of Joe Biden, in Florida he is far behind the former Vice President, as well as the billionaire former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg; he is sitting below a 15% average whilst his aforementioned competitors are comfortably above the 20% mark. His poor standing with Florida Democrats is not promising when looking forward to the general election either, and this is reflected in polling data. Whereas in almost all other statewide match-up polling between Sanders and Trump, Sanders comes out comfortably on top, in Florida he is beating the president by just 0.3% on average, which is very much within the margin of error. To be fair to the senator, most of his Democratic primary competitors are polling similarly, with only Bloomberg ahead of Trump by a comfortable 6%, and Biden a less comfortable 1.7%.
In the grand scheme, however, this is less about polling numbers and more about messaging. Yes, 2020 is the year of the general election, but we cannot forget about the essential local congressional elections which will choose who makes up the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives for the next two years. Whichever presidential candidate is elected in November will have their hands tied if they do not also have the support of the two legislative bodies which are in charge of lawmaking. Once again, Florida and the Sanders-factor may play a crucial role, this time in compromising a possible Democratic majority in either or both chambers.
In 2018, when the last congressional elections were held, Florida Democrats won two seats which were previously in Republican hands: the 26th and 27th congressional districts. Representatives Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala are the two congresswomen who are now worrying about the loss of their seats fewer than two years after their first elections. For context, both of their districts are 70% Hispanic and both women won their 2018 elections with very small margins; Mucarsel-Powell had less than a 2% advantage over her
Republican competitor. To make matters worse, both of their probable competitors in the upcoming race are prominent Cuban-Americans, one of whom, Carlos A. Giménez, is the former mayor of Miami-Dade County.
For these two congresswomen, the cards are already not looking to be in their favour. Now imagine the factors mentioned above combined with Bernie Sanders, along with his controversial rhetorics on Cuba and ‘revolution’, as the face of the Democratic party during these races. To make this clearer, the problem is not Republican vs. Democrat — both congressional districts voted overwhelmingly in favour of Obama in 2012 and Clinton in 2016 — but with a Sanders-stained ballot in the already-close congressional elections, these wide margins and guaranteed victories are far from sight.
To summarise, Democrats are in desperate need of wins in certain states; namely Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, states that turned red for Donald Trump in 2016. However, they cannot rely on these states switching back to blue due to, for example, controversial anti-fracking policies endorsed by multiple Democratic candidates. As a result, Florida could become imperative in getting whichever Democrat is chosen to pass the all-important 270 electoral vote margin, and win back the presidency. In order to do this, they desperately need the Cuban-American vote, and with Sanders and his revolución at the forefront of the ticket I doubt how truly possible this is.
Tommy is a third year Spanish & Portuguese student from the UK with a keen interest in language learning and global politics. He enjoys writing about current political affairs and turmoil, especially in Latin America.