Democrats are finding it increasingly difficult to connect with Latino voters — especially Cubans, who associate left-wing politics with the communism that tore their country apart. Jesus Maria Alvarez reports on the deep rifts within his community in the battleground state of Florida
Cubans tend to vote conservative. They vote that way because the Republicans have done their usual job of non-stop messaging on Democrat = Commie Socialist.
Many fled Cuba because of castro’s communism, and they understandably don’t want that again. There’s the religious factor, as many of them are catholic and of course the republicans call the Dems “godless” or whatever too.
There’s also this perverse psychology where people from authoritarian and repressed countries move out to democratic countries and then suddenly miss “the good old days” where reductionist messaging and “strong man” leaders just told them they were strong and flexed at every opportunity, but blamed everyone else when that strength wasn’t effective. Beat those protesters and jail them, send the military to the borders, arrest anyone who doesn’t conform. They want the authoritarian back. And the republicans offer that populist messaging of the strong man who is going to kick everyone’s ass, including the ones in your own country who don’t fit “the norm”. I’ve worked with emigrées (?sp) from both Cuba and Russia and it never ceases to both anger and baffle me that they ran away from shitty, awful dictators and then turn around and want the same thing here in the US.
I think what’s missing from your analysis is that they tend to be socially conservative. As in, they don’t like the gays and the atheists.
This was also left out of the discussion with Palestinian voters in Michigan at the peak of the blowback for Biden’s support of Israel a few months ago.
Are you implying that Palestinians weren’t going to vote Biden because they’re too socially conservative?
“Socially conservative” wraps up their position pretty tidily.
smells to me like it’s probably related to the psychology behind prolonged abusive relationships, or people continually getting into abusive relationships.
As if the Republican evangelicals actually had anything to do with christianism.
It’s not about what they actually do, it’s about how they make you feel about what they say.
It just surprises me that this messaging is so effective when Trump would love nothing more than to send every brown person living in Florida straight to Cuba, American citizen or otherwise. It’s a very strange sort of political climate where people who fear being deported back to Cuba are voting for the party promising mass deportations because… they don’t like abortion? I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, "At least the handle is one of us.”