PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)’s Squad is proving to be more than a chink in the Democratic armor, most especially in Florida “North.”
That would be Florida “North” in political, ideological, Cuban -and especially Jewish – terms. We are talking about the heaviest Jewish and Cuban population centers in Florida which are Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Just to clarify, these are the most populous counties in the state located geographically in the southeast corner of mainland Florida.
To Cubans in Miami-Dade, four congresswomen are plotting to turn America into a Stalinist regime complete with gulags. In the Jewish camp, many of our brethren are convinced that the Democratic Party is enabling two of those congresswomen to drive Israel’s Jews into the sea, and maybe even Boca’s Jews into the Atlantic. That’s Boca Raton in Palm Beach County.
Now that Joe Biden is our president-elect along with Democrats’ ongoing control of the House of Representatives, they must reconsider their relationship with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis, Rashida Tlaib of Detroit and Ayanna Pressley of Boston. I am confident that they will, but this much must be said:
This quartet does not and never has run the Democratic Party, and Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer better guarantee to the American people that these four are individual representatives who are part of a small minority in the House. The president-elect, the House speaker (Pelosi) and the Senate Democratic leader (Schumer) best heed said advice if they want to do better among Jewish, Cuban and American voters in general in the future.
It is safe to speculate that the Squad’s rantings cost Biden Jewish and Cuban votes in the three counties, two House seats in Miami-Dade and in large part a winning margin of Florida’s total vote, not to mention disappointing election results elsewhere in the country.
I was astonished by the scale of Republican electoral strength throughout the country, but after learning of voters’ rage over specific issues I thought: no wonder. Many were not voting so much for Trump and other Republicans but against Biden and the perceived plans of vocal Democrats that will be enabled by the Democratic leadership and rank-and-file.
As it has already been established, Cuban-Americans retaliated en masse when Squad members, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and others touted socialism to describe the systemic changes they sought. Cubans and some other Hispanic groups are extra-sensitive to any such suggestion because they lived under communist or socialistic regimes elsewhere
The Miami-Dade vote jumped almost 200,000 in four years for Trump while Biden lost 7,000 votes after Hillary Clinton received 624,000 votes in 2016, according to comparative sets of numbers from both elections. Biden won all three of the Florida North counties on Tuesday, but with a higher turnout Trump’s numbers rose higher in each since 2016.
With an estimated 650,000 Jews in Florida, Trump won an estimated 41 percent of the Jewish vote there, which is a considerable achievement since the GOP typically averages 25 percent among Jews. It is doubtful that any American Jew would vote Republican because they yearn to be denied affordable health care or be vulnerable to criminals who have easy access to guns.
Omar and Ilhan can take most credit for driving Jews to vote for Trump. Both have repeatedly expressed hostility to Israel, and Omar even lied about being skeptical of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
A die-hard segment of our brethren consistently votes Republican, and the vast majority usually back Democrats. However, there seems to be a changeable element that will switch party choices if they believe Israel is threatened by a given party. No question how the Squad can inspire that. (Ayanna Pressley has said that she takes pro-Israel positions because many of her constituents are Jewish.)
Distress over the close outcome percolated during a conference call among House Democrats on Thursday, as The New York Times recounts: “Representative Abigail Spanberger (of Virginia)…chastised her progressive colleagues for embracing the ‘defund the police’ movement and for not forcefully rebuffing accusations of socialism.
“If Democrats did not acknowledge the election results as a ‘failure’ and change strategies, she said, ..they would be ‘crushed’ in future elections.”
According to the Times, “Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina…said the party needed to overcome racial animus in the electorate, and had to shy away from certain far-left policies that alienate key segments of voters if Democrats “ hope to win two Senate runoffs in Georgia.
“He cautioned against running on ‘Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,’ adding that if Democrats pursued such policies, ‘we’re not going to win’.”
Democrats were also linked to violence during the Black Lives Matter protests attributed to the more radical members of the movement coupled with inaction in cities largely governed by Democrats. Rep. Max Rose was retired after one term representing Staten Island and part of south Brooklyn, losing to Republican Nicole Malliotakis. Rose, who is Jewish, is among Democratic representatives whose defeats led to at least a net loss of six for Democrats.
As the Times reports, “Ms. Malliotakis easily found success linking Mr. Rose…to the Black Lives Matter movement and the progressive factions of his party, including the city’s unpopular mayor.”
Said Jim Lamond, 79, of Bay Ridge, who voted for Rose: “She was able to paint Max Rose as less strong on law and order.” He told a Times reporter that friends of his “thought Rose was too linked to (Mayor Bill) de Blasio.”
So Donald Trump, don’t flatter yourself. The Nov. 3 Republican successes in congressional were no mandate for Trumpism. Many who voted for Trump and other Republicans were indeed loyalists, but probably many more were lashing out at Democrats’ enabling of extremists. I understood the temptation, enough to wonder at times if my vote for Biden and other Democrats was in my best interests. And I live in Pennsylvania, which means that I contributed to the election of Biden as president.
But Biden fell short of the tsunami-like victory that many of us expected. He might have won Florida, Iowa and North Carolina as well as secure Democratic control of the Senate had people not been so alarmed by the dogma of the Democratic Party’s Progressive wing.
Some prominent observers have already said that Democrats can alter these perceptions, and they are right. It is will depend upon how Biden and his partners in the party govern come Jan. 20.
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Bruce S. Ticker is a columnist based in Philadelphia.
Mitch, If memory serves, Susie usually won by 60 percent or more in past elections. She won by 51.1 percent this time against the combination of votes by the other three candidates. Possibly enough Mainers felt the way voters in other states felt about protests, defunding, socialism, etc. That’s speculation, but still plausible.
Bruce, you are looking at your position from the perspective of Florida’s sociopathic voter patterns. Biden was a well-known commodity who has nothing but contempt for The Squad, just as Pelosi does. To think Biden didn’t perform better because of The Squad is what old people and Boomers are being told on MSNBC and CNN, but, as usual with those DNC-propaganda outlets, they are wrong in their analysis and conclusion. Here is an article showing how Omar helped Biden deliver Minnesota (a state Hillary Clinton won only by 1.5% in 2016) and Tlaib helped Biden deliver Michigan (a state Hillary lost in a close one in 2016). They canvassed when the Biden camp did not (until the very end), and brought out new voters to help overcome the white supremacy voting Trump did. Biden won without Florida, so that your concern about Florida is misplaced to make any significant conclusion. Unlike many Jews in the US, I really like The Squad and know they speak for a lot of young people, including a lot of young American Jews. We Boomers and Oldsters have done far more damage to this country and this planet, and continue to do so. You may want to thank Omar and Tlaib for helping vanquish Trump. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/05/omar-and-tlaib-credited-major-factors-securing-biden-victories-minnesota-and
Mitch, you raise some good points. I learned of Ilhan and Rashida’s work during the weekend, after I submitted my commentary. However, what happened in Florida was a trend in many other states. Dems should have won Senate seats in Maine, NC and Iowa easily, which would leave Dems with Senate control already. I would bet that there were Jews in Michigan and Minnesota who voted for Trump in part because of them. Had Squad members taken a more measured approach on their issues (issues which should be taken seriously), would there have been a need to canvass so hard?
Had they not supported policies the majority of Americans support on the economic front, things would have gone better in Florida? And what could those two women do when their very existence–existence, Bruce–upsets some Jews into voting for a guy whose support includes actual Nazis and people who would kidnap a governor to execute her? I think you have to stop playing those tapes that always amounts to punching left at a time when the right wing has reached a frenzied pitch, where they openly denounce majority rule, and where they have no interest in governance, and only demonizing their opponents who they see as enemies of the people.
I would also add, in Maine, Biden won by nine points, and Gideon lost by 11 to Collins. I am not sure what happened there, but the Squad had nothing to do with that. I could say Biden’s moderate stance may have left people thinking Collins would work well with Biden, when you and I know better that Collins may voice “concerns,” but votes in lockstep most of the time with the most horrible elements in today’s GOP. Her vote on Barrett was a nothinburger as the Reeps had more than enough votes to confirm already, and it was Collins who dumbly believed Kavanaugh’s protestations that he would never harm Roe v. Wade.