Thursday, July 30, 2015

Hillary Clinton In South Florida

Via the Washington Post:

Hillary Rodham Clinton will go to Miami, heart of the Cuban American opposition to any warming of the decades-old deep freeze in U.S.-Cuba relations, to call for lifting the stiff U.S. embargo on commercial dealings with the communist nation.

The Democratic front-runner will make her first campaign appearances in vote-rich Florida on Friday, including the Cuba policy speech at Miami’s Florida International University. Her campaign announced the speech Wednesday and said she will expressly call on Congress to lift the embargo on trade, travel and other dealings with Cuba imposed by President John F. Kennedy more than 50 years ago.

Actually, if there’s opposition to lifting the embargo, it’s pretty faint.  A poll done over a year ago — before President Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations — showed that most Cuban-Americans, including those here in South Florida, are against the embargo.  So it’s not a very controversial stand to take even in Miami.

As Paul Waldman notes, “It just so happens that there are a couple of Floridians running for president who want to keep the embargo, on the theory that even if it hasn’t worked for 50 years, it’ll do the Castros in any day now.”