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Last months election was a mixed bag. Yes, Joe Biden got 12 million more votes than Hillary Clinton did. But Donald Trump added 9.5 million votes of his own. More than half of those new Trump voters 4.6 million of them came because he increased his share of nonwhite voters from 21 percent to 25 percent.

In some respects, these results are not entirely surprising. Trumps better performance with nonwhite voters is due largely, though not exclusively, to higher support in Latino communities ranging from southern Florida, to Texass Rio Grande Valley, to the dense former mill towns of New England. Latinos are not a unified voting bloc, and prior Republicans outperformed expectations the last Republican to perform similarly to Trump was George W. Bush in 2004.

Since most Latinos still voted for Joe Biden, some, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, conclude that Democratic strategists are using Latino voters as scapegoats for Bidens narrower than expected victory. This deflects attention from the Democratic Partys more disappointing, and significant, loss with rural white voters.

Nevertheless, Trumps performance with nonwhite voters deserves consideration because of what it says about the present and future of the Democratic Party. It may represent more of a trend than a blip. George W. Bush actively courted Latinos emphasizing, for example, Latino members of his own extended family, which make his gains less surprising than Trumps, who launched his campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as bad hombres, rapists, and murderers.

And even if the 2020 results turn out to be more of a blip than a trend, they are a blip that has already been politicized by self-described moderates within the Democratic Party, who seek to use them to attack left-wing candidates. You have probably already heard the claim that Latinos are turned off by socialism and progressive policies, and that they identify more with gritty self-starters than with the recipients of social programs.

Its a narrative that should be questioned, especially when considering how previous generations of voters were won to the Democratic coalition. Democrats did not incorporate constituencies like Southern and Eastern Europeans and African Americans by messaging alone. They used an organizational strategy that relied on local proxies such as labor unions, political machines, churches, and other grassroots organizations. And this, in combination with victories like Social Security and the Civil Rights Act, which created meaningful economic and social uplift, won the loyalty of voters for generations. Today, many of those capable of acting as Democratic proxies within communities of color are democratic socialists and other left-of-center activists.

Some within the Democratic Party claim that Trump won support by exploiting fears of socialism and the specters of antifa and Black Lives Matter. Trump is not the first Republican to use such a strategy. Republicans called FDR a Bolshevik. The American Medical Association stoked Americans fears of socialized medicine to defeat Harry Trumans universal health care plan in 1947. Martin Luther King Jr was called a communist. Barack Obama was, according to vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a socialist who pals around with terrorists.

Republicans mounted the same attack on Biden, who has a long, virtually unblemished record of standing at the right end of the Democratic Party, and who explicitly denounced Medicare for All and proclaimed that his primary victory over Bernie Sanders was proof that the party was not socialist. But some Beltway insiders nevertheless claim that the mere presence of left-of-center politics dooms Democrats, particularly among nonwhite voters who supposedly have an innate distaste for socialism. Meanwhile, democratic socialists point to Bernie Sanderss success among Latino voters to claim that socialism is popular among Latino voters; perhaps Biden hurt himself by not embracing more egalitarian economic ideas.

Both sides of this debate overestimate the degree to which most voters, including nonwhite voters, have fixed positions on socialism. Like other Americans, Latino voters have made no gains in real income since the mid-twentieth century and have seen a decline of household wealth relative to white households. There is a widespread feeling in many Latino communities that the system is not working fairly, a view shared by many other Americans.

However, as academic studies of political preferences show, only a tiny minority of voters, whether white or nonwhite, translate such sentiments into abstract political categories like socialism or capitalism. Most people instead use their intuitions about which side will hear, see, and fight for people like themselves an intuition that could be born of a candidates support for specific policies, but also their messaging, outreach, or the views of ones peers.

This election, along with years of polling results, further shows an enormous disconnect between the cultural meaning that voters attach to progressivism or socialism and their views on left policies themselves. One data point is exit polls, which suggest that programs like Medicare for All are supported by a majority of both Democrats and Republicans. Police reform, likewise, is popular as long as it does not mean abolishing all police. Another piece of evidence emerges from direct referenda, as in Florida, where a $15 an hour minimum wage passed 60 to 40 percent even though Trump beat Biden.

Conversely, voters in dark blue California and Illinois rejected progressive referenda that called for higher taxes on the rich and economic justice for gig workers further evidence of the disconnect between cultural progressivism and tangible progressive policy. Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California and J. B. Pritzker of Illinois (himself a billionaire) turned out not to be credible advocates for the tax propositions in their state. Like most mainstream Democratic politicians, they had past records of serving the rich, cutting social programs, and undermining workers. As a result, they lacked the credibility that consistent and committed socialists like Bernie Sanders have when they make promises.

What is certain is that voters like socialism once they get it. Universal or near-universal social programs like public K12 education, Social Security, and Medicare were controversial when they were proposed and the latter two were roundly decried as socialism but they are now popular even among Republicans. Republicans succeed in demonizing means-tested programs like Medicaid and food stamps, which mainstream Democratic consider more pragmatic, because these pit the needs of poor Americans against those who earn too much to qualify for benefits. This allows Republicans to stoke racial resentment, even though a plurality of those who benefit from such programs are white. The same attacks on Social Security and Medicare fall flat, because these are widely utilized and popular among Americans of all walks of life.

Mainstream Democrats say that the party will never win elections and enact social programs by running on economic redistribution especially among Latinos who supposedly identify with entrepreneurs. Naturally, some Latinos do, but recent electoral history debunks this as a wholesale explanation. Of recent elections, Obamas 2012 contest with Mitt Romney hinged most on this issue. Romney famously quipped that 47 percent of Americans were dependent on state entitlements and would never vote for him, and demonized Obamas supposed plan to punish wealth creators. Obama, whose policy record was decidedly mixed, nevertheless pushed back, needling Romney for his lavish lifestyle, ties to Wall Street, and what Obama described as a plan to Make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. You can . . . lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and still make money.

Obama not only beat Romney but earned a higher percentage of the Latino vote than any Democrat in the last twenty-five years: 73 percent.

By contrast, Trump is a skilled chameleon. He used socialism as a scare word, but he leaned less heavily on Republican economic orthodoxy in his messaging: he proclaimed his support for Social Security, Medicare, and a higher minimum wage, and he promised, even if he never delivered it, a massive infrastructure program and health care legislation. It strains credulity that he exceeded expectations against Clinton and Biden, who ran screaming for the political center, because nonwhite Americans developed a sudden aversion to economic redistribution and universal social programs.

And so, we must look for answers elsewhere in the organizational weaknesses of the Democratic Party.

In the franchise-like organizational structure of American political parties, down-ballot candidates serve as proxy ambassadors for the marquee presidential race. Presidential campaigns are ephemeral by definition, and they rely on local candidates and organizations like unions or advocacy networks to identify new voters and sell them on the partys presidential nominee.

And throughout the country, down-ballot candidates in communities of color increasingly run and win to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party. Many nonwhite legislators entered politics through the Bernie Sanders campaign or progressive organizations like the Working Families Party, and they generally garnered more votes than the Biden/Harris ticket in 2020.

One of this articles authors, for example, ran successfully for state senate and outperformed Biden on a platform of a $15 minimum wage, raising taxes on the highest earning households, increasing public education funding, legalizing marijuana, and implementing Green New Deal reforms. As in other parts of the nation, progressive Democrats generally underperformed the Biden/Harris ticket only in wealthy, largely white, and suburban districts.

Grassroots proxies are especially important to Democratic efforts to attract new voters in Latino communities. Online voter databases are the backbone of most campaigns, and candidates use them to target voters in their respective districts through door-knocking visits, emails, phone calls, and text messages. But these databases also lead campaigns to focus on high propensity voters super voters. This systematically excludes young and newly registered voters.

In Latino communities, where young people, the elderly, and recently naturalized immigrants are a higher portion of the electorate, voters can easily fall through the cracks.

In Central Falls, Rhode Island, for example, where one of the authors of this essay was recently elected, Trump garnered 456 new voters between 2016 and 2020. But there were 1,179 voters who didnt vote in 2016 or 2018. About 250 of these were new voters who recently turned eighteen, and the rest either immigrated or migrated to the state or chose to vote again after sitting out the last two elections. Thats nearly 1,200 voters almost a quarter of all voters in Central Falls who would have received virtually no outreach from either party.

We do not think that Trumps improvement in 2020 is due entirely to new nonwhite voters. There are lots of indications that, as elsewhere in the United States, Trump performed better by turning out more white votes in Central Falls. But it is likely that Trump also won over some new Latino voters, and that situation makes the Democratic Party vulnerable.

In Texass Rio Grande Valley, for example, Democrats ran no coordinated campaign, while Republicans did and ate into the Democratic margin through sustained engagement with groups like law and border enforcement agents, Latino evangelicals, business owners, and young people disillusioned with chronic underinvestment in the region.

Whether this trend continues depends on the Democratic Partys ability to coordinate with down-ballot candidates. The relationship can range from tightly coordinated campaigns to loose alliances built mostly on party affiliation. In the coordinated scenario, local candidates speak on behalf of the presidential candidate and build buy-in from their adherents. When there isnt a tight relationship between the national party candidate and local proxy ambassadors, the latter can ignore the presidential candidate and spend more time emphasizing their own messaging.

The contrast between 2016 and 2020 in Central Falls illustrates this. In 2016, the popular mayor running for reelection worked hard on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He opened an office across from City Hall plastered with his signs right alongside Clinton signs. Secretary Clinton had paid the city a visit during her 2008 bid for office, and many restaurants still had Clintons picture up on their wall. Her popularity in the city was so high that she won the Democratic primary in Central Falls even though Bernie Sanders won Rhode Island as a whole.

In 2020, the coordination consisted entirely of an email to local candidates asking if they needed more lawn signs for their constituents. This year, there were noticeably fewer Biden-Harris signs across Central Falls than there were Clinton-Kaine signs in 2016. There was generally less enthusiasm, and the only invitation to be part of the presidential campaign came in the form of a phone bank volunteering effort to make calls to voters in other states.

Considering the election in this light, we see that it makes more sense to focus on party strategy, or the lack thereof, than to blame voters. In places like Georgia and Arizona, where the State Democratic party had a strategy for registering, activating, and messaging voters, we saw large levels of support for Biden. In places like Central Falls, where there was no discernible coordinated voter outreach effort, random variation and entropy may account for movers and the choices of recently registered voters.

If they want to win the support of new as well as established voters, mainstream Democrats need to make peace with the left wing of the party. Activists have shown they are open to alliances of convenience with mainstream Democrats, but outright hostility is sure to demobilize them. Attacks on socialism or police reform efforts are especially counterproductive, because these are some of the key issues that bring newly elected candidates into politics to begin with. Such attacks do little to win voters, while needlessly throwing sand into the gears of the Democratic Partys already feeble electoral machine.

Despite these organizational shortcomings, not all is lost. Yet if there is a way forward, it will not be found by shifting election data to assemble coalitions of voters seen through narrow identities. Rather, we should do what has worked historically to forge solid electoral coalitions: a combination of messaging and ambitious social and civil policies that, though initially controversial, make a meaningful change in peoples lives.

Those ambitious universal programs and economic redistribution, far more than rhetorical moderation and identity-based pandering, are the best bet for winning over workers of all races for generations to come.

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Neoliberalism Is Driving Away Working-Class Voters of Color. They Need to Be Won Back. - Jacobin magazine

During this election, I have heard a lot of talk from people saying they do not want to live under socialism. Thesepeople equate socialism with communism. While communism is an extreme form of socialism, they are not the same thing.

Well, guess what, people? We already do and have since 1933, with FDRs New Deal.

In 1929, as you know, we saw the financial collapse known as the Great Depression. A lot of people were out of work, some 25%. Many, many people stood in soup lines. Communism, at this time, held out a promise of better economic times for many people, and many Americans were attracted to its promises. FDR saw this, and knew communism would gain a foothold here, if the government did nothing to help alleviate the suffering of the people. So he came up with the New Deal, which consisted of public works programs, financial reforms and regulations. It included the Civil Conservation Corps, Civil Works Administration, Farm Security Administration, National Industrial Recovery Act and the Social Security Administration.

These programs helped to pull us out of the Great Depression. And who paid for it? He applied special taxes on the very wealthiest and corporations. And the wealthy, have ever since, been fighting it and waging a war of misinformation in order to do away with things like Social Security, and Medicare.

Nowadays we also have other programs to help the needy, like SNAP, unemployment compensation, housing assistance and child care assistance.

Now I have heard many people complain about their tax dollars going to help these lazy people. They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps:

What happens when you have no boots? Think of it like this; our tax dollars are going into a common fund, like insurance, because no one can say for sure they will never need assistance at some point. I have seen people who have worked for20 years or more, and then their job is eliminated. I have seen a married couple, where the husband contracted cancer, and at some point, his insurance company dropped him, then he died for lack of insurance for treatment, and the wife ended up losing the house and living in her car. This should never happen in this country.

Also, many people think socialism means that the state controls the means of production. This is Marxism! Karl Marx wrote about economic problems in his day, and this was one of his solutions. Today we have a different solution, called social democracy.

Noone is talking about the government controlling the means of production. Social democracy, is all in favor of private ownership of businesses, of free enterprise and honest elections. Social democracy tries to live up to the ideals listed in the Preamble to the Constitution, which is an outline of the mission of the government, and states that one of its goals is to provide for the welfare of its citizens.

All of our European allies are socialistic, to varying degrees. The people of the Scandinavian countries are listed as some of the happiest on earth.

We have been taught a bad trait in this country. To punch down. To hold back people we think are inferior. This is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Islam and most religions on earth. They teach to help the poor.

Oh, and by the way, remember thatCOVID-19stimulus earlier this year? That was socialism at work, not capitalism.

Kerry Eikenskold

Inyokern, Calif.

(former Ashtabula County resident)

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Let's talk about socialism: It's already here | Letters To The Editor - The Star Beacon

I was quite surprised at the large number of readers who chose to respond to my commentary last month on the subject of socialism. All but a few were quite laudatory.

One negative response, however, has prompted the need for a correction and clarification.

Although Robert Stepp and I probably will disagree on many issues, he observed that I was confusing social programs with socialism. And he is correct.

The dictionary definition of socialism states that it is a political, social and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production and workers self-management of enterprises.

With that definition in mind, I must report that I dont know of anyone who really wants socialism. In addition, I must admit that I, too, think true socialism is a bad system particularly because it involves society or government ownership of production. Production is best provided by capitalism.

But we definitely do need government-operated social programs to provide various needed social services.

For instance, friend Jerry Martin asked:

Would you rather have only private military? Would you rather have only privately owned roads? Would you rather have only privately controlled police? Court systems? No more social security? No more Medicare or Medicaid?

But on the need for both capitalism and social programs, Lynn Ely wrote:

Excellent summation on how both socialism and capitalism benefit us in different ways. Its not an either/or. Its an and. As a healthcare professional, I have wanted to see the US embrace a universal health care system like every other industrial nation in the world has. I am dumbfounded as to why the American people think that the for profit model serves us better.

Richard Stormsgaard, in a polite response, also called attention to the problem caused by referring to socialism rather than social programs. He wrote:

No wonder there is so much confusion about socialism, and it benefits the far right and the far left, and is a threat to the rest of us.

But it was particularly satisfying to me to have Dr. Jeff Kane comment because of how much I have been enjoy reading his columns. He wrote:

Your points are especially applicable to healthcare financing. Today a quarter to a third of our healthcare dollars go to insurance intermediaries. These corporations have nothing whatsoever to do with healthcare. They only handle the money that flows between us and providers, taking a large cut in the process.

Were paying much more than necessary largely because opponents of the single-payer plan call it socialist to scare the electorate. But its not, since care is entirely private and the government handles the money with no profit motive.

Dr. Kane added that the administrative costs of Medicare average only 4 to 5% compared to 25 to 33% for other healthcare systems.

Another respondent, who used a pseudonym rather than his or her name, wrote:

The term Socialism is a dogwhistle used to phreak out Republicans and scare them. This applies especially to older voters who lived through the Red Scare during the Cold War years. In their minds the S word is equivalent to the C word, Communism and the chants of Better dead than Red. It is the epitome of negative campaigning.

Then I received Patricia Sharps message, thanking me for explaining how capitalism functions best in tandem with socialism.

Then she added the historic remarks by President Harry Truman in Syracuse, N.Y., on Oct. 10, 1952. He said:

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan Down With Socialism on the banner of his great crusade, that is really not what he means at all.

What he really means is Down with Progress down with Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, and down with Harry Trumans fair Deal. Thats all he means.

So isnt it time for us to stop quibbling over the two labels and realize that we definitely need various social services in an otherwise generally capitalistic society?

Darrell Berkheimer, who lives in Grass Valley, is a frequent contributor to The Union. He has seven books available through Amazon. His sixth, Essays from The Golden Throne, includes 60 columns published by The Union, plus a dozen western travel and photo essays. Contact him at mtmrnut@yahoo.com.

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Darrell Berkheimer: Confusing social programs with socialism - The Union of Grass Valley

Depending on whom you ask, socialism might be described as historically inevitable, evil incarnate, a utopian fantasy, or a scientific method. Most fundamentally, socialism is a political, philosophic, and economic system in which the means of productionthat is, everything that goes into making goods for useare collectively controlled, rather than owned by private corporations as they are under capitalism, or by aristocrats under feudalism.

In seeking to make the case for socialismand to understand impediments to a world governed by peoples needs rather than corporate profitsthinkers in the socialist tradition have grappled with topics as varied as colonialism, gender, race, art, sex, psychology, economics, medicine, ecology, and countless other issues. As such, this Reading List makes no claim of being exhaustive; rather, it seeks to achieve two modest goals: to acquaint readers with a handful of key socialist preoccupations, and to demonstrate how the core concepts of socialist thought have been articulated at different historical moments and taken up by women and people of color.

Eugene W. Schulkind,The Activity of Popular Organizations during the Paris Commune of 1871(1960)

What kind of society do socialists want? Many unfamiliar with the socialist tradition assume the Soviet Union or other putatively communist states represent socialist ideals come to fruition. But for many socialists throughout history, the most generative and compelling model is the seventy-two-day social experiment known as the Paris Commune. During their brief time ruling Paris, the communards eliminated the army, secularized education, equalized pay, and implemented numerous feminist initiatives, including establishing child care centers and abolishing the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children.

Rosa Luxemburg,Reform or Revolution(1900)Socialists uniformly believe that different social arrangements are needed to address social problems, but how might those transformations most effectively come to fruition? One of the major questions that has animated socialist debates throughout the centuries is whether it is possible to achieve socialism through progressive reforms, or whether reforms would only serve to strengthen capitalism. Here the revolutionary presents her thoughts.

Clara Zetkin,1914 Preface to Edward Bellamys Looking Backward (1887)Karl Marx was famously opposed to rigidly outlining what future socialist societies should look like, claiming that this would be like writing recipes for the kitchens of the future. Despite his reticence, many artists, frustrated by the constraints of capitalism and captivated by the promises of socialist futures, have contributed to imagining alternative worlds. Edward Bellamys early science fiction novel Looking Backward presents one attempt at envisioning a socialist society of the futurefree from war, poverty, advertisements, and other unpleasantries. Here, Clara Zetkin, a prominent socialist and feminist activist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (best known for her efforts to establish International Womens Day), introduces the novel.

Eric Foner,Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1984)One of the countrys best living historians examines questions that have preoccupied generations: How does the political and economic exceptionalism of the United States shape its historical relationship to socialism? Why does the U.S. working class appear less inclined toward socialist class consciousness than in other advanced capitalist countries?

Cedric Robinson,C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tradition (1983)Telling the story of C.L.R. James, one of the most important socialist intellectuals of the twentieth century, Cedric Robinson (an intellectual giant in his own right) traces the history of socialism as it crosses continents and oceans. Centering Black radicals, not as a homogenous group but as members of a multifaceted tradition who write as seamlessly about cricket, anticolonial struggles, and class formation, Robinson takes the reader through issues at the heart of socialism.

Combahee River Collective, A Black Feminist Statement (1979)Identity politics has become a controversial and often derided topic in recent years. In this groundbreaking text, the Combahee River Collectivea group of Black feminist socialists named for the location from which Harriet Tubman launched one of her major military missionsunderscores the necessity of rooting anti-capitalist projects in peoples lived experiences: We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.

Sarah Leonard,What is Socialist Feminism? (2020)Teen Vogue may have once evoked adolescent frivolity, but in recent years the magazine has repositioned itself as a serious contributor to the rising popularity of leftist politics among bright young people, thanks to its rigorous and accessible political analysis. Here, socialist feminist writer Sarah Leonard draws from bell hooks, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the 1970s feminist collective Wages for Housework to outline a few key socialist feminist insights. For those interested in pursuing the topic further, Leonard encourages readers to connect with the extensive resources generated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)s Socialist Feminist working group.

Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster,Marxs Ecology in the 21st Century(2010)Marx may have written in the nineteenth century, but his insights are still used by contemporary thinkers to understand many of todays most pressing issues. Here Clark and Foster draw from central concepts in Marxs oeuvre to understand how capitalism has led to climate catastrophe and, eventually, might inspire ecosocialism. In their words, The power of Marxs ecology is that it provides a rigorous approach for studying the interchange between society and nature, while taking into consideration the specific ecological conditions of an ecosystem (and the larger web of nature), as well as the particular social interactions as shaped by the capitalist mode of production.

Michael Lowy and Penelope Duggan,Marxism and Romanticism in the Work of Jose Carlos Mariategui(1998)A compelling introduction to Mariategui, the Peruvuan socialist philosopher who merged precolonial history, romanticism, and a trenchant analysis of capitalism. In contrast to the austere world many antisocialists imagine, [s]ocialism according to Mariategui lay at the heart of an attempt at the reenchantment of the world through revolutionary action.

Red Nation,Communism Is the Horizon(2020)In their recent pamphlet, the Indigenous collective Red Nation expounds upon the centrality of queer, Indigenous feminism to their understanding of socialism and their struggle toward a communist horizon.

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Socialism: Foundations and Key Concepts - JSTOR Daily

Following his surprising victory in 2016, Donald Trump claimed he got 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote in South Florida.

He was exaggerating.

But 2020 was a different story.

Years of courting voters with tough policies toward Cuba and Venezuela, a strong pre-pandemic economy, an unmatched Republican ground game in Miami-Dade and a targeted messaging instilling fear about socialism coming to America helped the president rally Cuban-American voters, part of the reason he carried Florida.

Although Trump lost the election, his inroads into the Cuban-American community in South Florida suggests trouble ahead for the Democratic Party.

Definite numbers for 2020 are still in dispute, but estimates reflect the Democratic Partys poor performance among Cuban Americans, and among Hispanics in general, in Florida.

While Trump won more Cuban-American votes in 2016 than Hillary Clinton in Miami-Dade County, his margin was somewhere between 54 and 57 percent, below Mitt Romneys 60 percent share in 2012.

Separate analyses of tallies in more than 30 Cuban-majority precincts in Hialeah, Westchester and the suburbs of southwest Miami-Dade by Republican and Democratic strategists suggest that four years later, Trump made double-digit gains, getting as much as 69 percent of the Cuban-American vote. Giancarlo Sopo, a Trump campaign staffer, and Carlos Odio, director of the Democratic research firm EquisLabs, independently concluded that President-elect Joe Bidens percentage of the Cuban-American vote in Miami-Dade was in the low 30s.

But this might not be the whole picture, said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor and pollster at Florida International University. While Trump undeniably improved his numbers in heavily Cuban areas like Hialeah and Westchester, Gamarra has found less enthusiasm in more wealthy enclaves like Coral Gables and Key Biscayne.

If youre going to analyze the Cuban vote, you need to account for the vote in the entire county, he said. He cited several exit polls and others done close to the election of people who had already voted, including one poll he was involved in, showing that Trump got around 55 percent of the Cuban-American vote.

Fernand Amandi, a long-term Democratic political strategist who runs the firm Bendixen & Amandi International, believes Bidens share of the Cuban-American vote in Miami-Dade might be about 38 percent, and a bit higher statewide, about 41 percent, according to exit polls and surveys his firm conducted.

But Sopo and Odio disagree with these estimates because many polls proved to be off during this election cycle. If Trump had won only a 55 percent share of the Cuban American vote in Miami-Dade, that number would not reflect the enthusiasm shown by pro-Trump Cuban-American voters nor help explain his overall winning margins in the state, where he got around 371,000 votes more than Biden.

Regardless of the final number, all agree the Biden campaign was not up to the challenge.

Its still a poor result, Amandi said, calling the Biden campaign at times invisible in Miami-Dade County. The COVID-19 pandemic had much to do with it, Odio added, since the campaign did not knock on doors till weeks before the election and decided to limit in-person events, and was unable to match Trumps energetic rallies.

But Trump never really stopped campaigning in Florida. For years now, the Democrats have not been able to match the strong presence of the Republican Party in the community, which has given many Cuban Americans an identity, Florida International University professor Guillermo Grenier wrote in a two-part analysis of the Cuban vote. He is the director of the Florida International University poll that every two years surveys the opinions of Cuban-American voters residing in Miami-Dade.

The fundamental problem is that the Democrats took their foot off the accelerator from engaging with the Cuban community, said Amandi, who was part of the team that helped Barack Obama win the support of Cuban and other Hispanic voters in the county. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign never stopped in its efforts to win the Cuban vote for four years.

While Cuban Americans have been a reliable Republican voting bloc, supporting the traditional themes of low taxes, small government and family values, there was a perfect storm of things particular to this election that ended up helping Republicans, Odio said.

He cites a prosperous economy, the strongman aspect of Trumps character that apparently appealed to some Cubans and other Hispanics, and the election to Congress of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which further fueled the narrative about the Democratic Party steering to the left. Acts of vandalism amid protests over police brutality and slogans like Defund the police were also exploited by the Trump campaign and Trumps surrogates to instill fear of a progressive left that would dictate Bidens agenda.

The Democrats also learned the hard way that demography is not destiny, as the American political scientist Ruy Teixeira wrote in his influential essay warning that changes in the electorate do not always favor the Democrats.

For many years, Democrats assumed that as older Cuban exiles were being replaced by new Cuban arrivals and younger voters, Cuban Americans would become less Republican. The 2020 presidential election was a surprise: The Florida International University 2020 poll found that many Cuban immigrants coming after 2010 had been registering Republican and becoming strong Trump supporters.

We ran an innovative grassroots and advertising effort that directly engaged newer Cuban arrivals who had been largely ignored by both parties as well as young U.S.-born Cuban Americans in ways that were culturally relevant to them and different than how youd engage my abuelos generation, said Sopo, a Miami native who was one of the architects of the messaging targeting Hispanics in Florida.

The campaign ran a Spanish video ad featuring popular Cuban actress Susana Prez, who is better known among Cubans who came to U.S. after 1980. Another radio ad with fictional characters Marita y Yesenia mimics the speaking style and slang used by recent arrivals.

Most observers agree that there is no single issue that could explain why most Cuban Americans mobilized so forcefully this year to support the president.

Take Hialeah, a working-class city with the most Obamacare enrollees in the nation and where many recently arrived Cubans live. The Trump administration asked the courts to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. Yet, the Democratic Party was unable to exploit this to its advantage, and Trump grew his share of the vote by 18 points in the city, compared to 2016, beating Biden 67 percent to 32.5 percent, according to Sopos analysis.

There have been several attempts to explain why Cuban Americans in Hialeah would vote for a candidate whose policies could affect their healthcare or have already limited their ability to travel to the island or reunite with family members.

Gamarra believes that working-class Cuban Americans do not behave that differently from non-college-educated white voters, a core group in Trumps base. And Odio argues that many might be attracted to the image of the successful businessman, who is politically incorrect and stands against Washingtons establishment and the media.

Trumps nationalist populism also seems to have resonated with many Cuban Americans.

The chorus of a viral song by the Cuban musical group Tres de La Habana that later became part a Trump campaign ad says, If you feel proud to be Cuban and American, raise your hands!

But beyond issues of cultural identity and nationalist rhetoric, a lot of the burden for Biden doing poorly among Cuban Americans is on the decisions taken by the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign, most analysts agreed.

Gamarra said besides being late, the Biden campaign made other mistakes, like deciding it was not worth investing much in improving their numbers with Cuban Americans and taking for granted that other Hispanic groups, like Colombians, would vote Democratic.

The Biden campaign acknowledged it didnt need to win the support of a majority of Cuban Americans to win Florida but was hoping to match Clintons numbers or compensate for those votes somewhere else, for example, with non-Cuban Hispanics. That didnt happen either.

We built a new conservative coalition in South Florida consisting of Cubans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in Miami-Dade County, Sopo wrote in a memo obtained by the Miami Herald. This netted approximately 255,657 additional votes for President Trump in Miami-Dade in 2020, which accounted for around 69 percent of his 371,686-vote victory over Joe Biden in Florida.

Amandi was one of the first in sounding the alarm about the Democrats problem with Cuban voters, especially regarding their lack of response to attacks portraying their candidates as socialists or communists, which were successfully deployed against Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race.

The biggest mistake was when it was decided that the accusations about socialism and communism were not going to be rebuked because they were considered absurd, Amandi said.

The Trump campaign made a concerted effort to misleadingly portray Biden as a socialist, posting manipulated images of him embracing Venezuelan strongman Nicols Maduro and claiming he was the candidate of Castro-Chavismo in one of its most viewed ads in South Florida. Such accusations found fertile soil in Miami Cuban media and were amplified on local Miami radio, TV stations, and by social media influencers who had welcomed Trumps tough talk on Cuba and Venezuela.

Shortly after Trumps victory in 2016, Cuban exile groups who felt left out from the policy-making process during the Obama administration became more vocal in their criticism of what they saw as Obamas failed engagement policies with Cuba and concessions made to the Cuban government.

Increased government repression on the island, the Cuban leaderships unwavering support of Maduro in Venezuela, and Cubas reluctance to implement reforms to rescue a rapidly deteriorating economy all reinforced perceptions about the failures of engagement. With its eyes on Florida 2020, Trump vowed in Miami to reverse the prior administrations terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime, and made Cuba and Venezuela the center of its Latin American policy.

The picture is nuanced: While most Cuban Americans approve of President Trumps sanctions campaign against the Cuban government, they also support many of Obamas policies, such as maintaining diplomatic relations or travel to the island, as shown by the Florida International University 2020 poll. Pro-engagement advocates still contend that Obamas policies did not hurt the Democratic Party. But others believe that misses a crucial point.

The weaponization of U.S. policy towards Cuba was the entry point to help cement the idea that the Democratic Party is the party of socialists, Amandi said.

Then there was the 2020 media environment, with voters watching or reading partisan media, living in information bubbles, and plenty of misinformation circulating among the Hispanic communities, making it difficult for the Democratic campaign messaging to make it through. By the time the campaign started responding to the socialism accusations, it was too late.

Just weeks before the election, Mike Bloomberg financed a round of TV ads featuring members of the Bay of Pigs Brigade and Cuban exile writer Carlos Alberto Montaner pushing back on the accusations that Biden and running mate Kamala Harris were socialists. Internal polling data suggest the ads were able to move the needle in favor of Biden. But the effort came too late to have a larger impact on the race.

However, analysts believe that, with the right strategy, the Democratic Party could again reach the historic support Obama obtained among Cuban Americans in 2012. In that election he won 53 percent of Cuban Americans who cast a ballot on Election Day, and an overall 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote in the state, according to a poll by Bendixen & Amandi.

It would be a mistake for both parties to believe that these numbers are permanent, Amandi said.

Originally posted here:
Invisible campaign and the specter of socialism: Why Cuban Americans fell hard for Trump - Tampa Bay Times