South Florida Cubans Cost Al Gore the Presidency
Will Michigan Muslims and liberals do the same thing to Joe Biden?
In November 1999, the sweet little 6-year-old seen in the picture here, Elian Gonzalez, was only one of three survivors of a capsized boat that had illegally set sail from Cuba for Miami. His mother and other sibling both died. Elain’s father had remained behind in Cuba.
Elian became the most famous and loved little boy in the Little Havana community of Miami. Relatives in Miami took him in, and the tight-knit community of anti-Cuban, naturalized Americans fell in love with Elian. Months later, after receiving a request from the father in Cuba through the Cuban government, federal agents raided the home where little Elian was living and sent him back to his dad — seen above. Elian is an engineer and a popular politician in Cuba today.
While the images of the federal agents were indeed something out of a political-action thriller capable of making the most hardened person shed a tear, what would happen next, and is still happening, goes away beyond the plight of that little boy.
“Political analysts later speculated that backlash within the Cuban exile community following Gonzalez’s return may have been a deciding factor in Florida during the 2000 US Presidential election (Elian Gonzalez, 10 Years On).”
Six million votes were cast in Florida in 2000, and the difference between the winner, George W. Bush and Al Gore — before the SCOTUS ordered that the recount be stopped — was 537. Before the Gonzalez incident, most Cubans would have voted for Gore. The backlash, however, to the deportation of the little boy, despite Gore’s break with Clinton over the issue during the campaign year, was so intense that Democrats in Little Havana were viewed with the same hatred that Fidel Castro was. To this day, South Florida Cubans are a reliable Republican voting bloc.
I will tell you this with the certainty that I know my name: If Al Gore had been elected to the presidency, then there would have been no 9/11; if no 9/11, then no war in Afghanistan and Iraq; if no wars, then no hyper-militarization of American society. The religious right would have remained an extremist fringe on the far right. Fox News might never have become the sole voice for shaping right-wing extremist views, and ultimately, there may never have been a Trump presidency.
America in 1999–2000 was not the angry, fear-mongered society it became over the next 24 years. The opioid tragedy was beginning, and without wars and extremism from the right, American politicians might have been more focused on trying to prevent Purdue Pharma from succeeding in hooking the nation on OxyContin.
This comment was made by a South Floridian (Marco Island) political analyst, Irvin Brecher:
I suggest, however, quoting New York Times columnist William Safire, that the notorious Elian Gonzalez case came back, in no less significant a way, to haunt the 2000 presidential race: “Though he publicly disagreed with his administration’s decision to return Elian Gonzalez to Castro’s Cuba . . . Gore suffered for Bill Clinton’s action, and for Janet Reno’s dark-of-night assault. Florida’s Cuban Americans delivered about 60,000 more votes to George Bush this year than to Bob Dole in 1996.”
Put another way, it has been reliably estimated that the Cuban-American backlash against Clinton administration bungling in the Elian case cost Mr. Gore about 40,000 votes — far more than enough to have given him the U.S. presidency (Gonzalez Cost Gore the Presidency).
40,000 votes in Florida went to Bush instead of Gore. Let’s do the math: 537 minus 40,000 equals 39,463 votes that would have been cast for Gore and not Bush, giving him the state and the presidency.
Even if 35,000 of those voters were so passionate as to swear never to vote again for a Democrat, did 4,463 vote out of a matter of principle? When does one’s “principle” become destructive, and it is not truly naivete, if not even to say selfishness?
Michigan liberals plan to punish Biden for Gaza
Our Revolution, a political movement created by Bernie Sanders, is kicking up a fuss in a must-win state for President Biden. The fringe group’s leaders are selfishly calling for a no-vote for Biden to protest his administration’s support of Israel.
On Wednesday, Our Revolution is planning to send an email to 87,000 members in Michigan and to about 225,000 supporters in other states, encouraging them to vote Uncommitted in the state’s Feb. 27 primary to “push Biden to change course on Gaza now.”
Former Representative Andy Levin, Democrat of Michigan and a signee of the letter, said Mr. Biden was at risk of having voters sit out the November election in protest of U.S. policy toward the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. He warned that Mr. Biden could lose the state to former President Donald J. Trump in the general election without a major change in Israel policy.
“I am working with some people who feel like they will never vote for Joe Biden, but there are many, many, many I feel will vote for Joe Biden on Nov. 5 if he changes course,” Mr. Levin said in an interview Tuesday evening. “This is the best way I can help Joe Biden (Liberal Group Joins Efforts).”
Let me be the first to say it: You Goddamn traitors! Pull your heads out of your asses!
I don’t support our nation’s blind support for Israel. I, too, feel that the response to the October 7th terrorist attack is not bordering on genocide, but how could the plight of a people who would most likely kill me — and the Our Revolution supporters — if I suddenly ended up in their city, more important than the survival of American democracy?
Are people so historically uninformed as to not understand that all that happened between 2000 and 2024 can be traced back to Janet Reno’s idiotic decision to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba? Or are people just so stupid that they can’t see that by denying Joe Biden a re-election victory, they are ensuring that everything in this world will get much, much worse? If this isn’t a case of cleaving off your nose to mock your face, then I don’t know what it is.
What is it about liberals that they are such naive and silly do-gooders that they can’t see that no good will come out of denying Biden’s re-election? Trump will be much worse for Gaza because Benjamin Netanyahu is a more dangerous extremist than Trump. He is the kind of despot that Trump loves, and so he will support the continued genocide of Gazans.
But let me also inform some of the silly liberals in Michigan and the U.S. Congress about Gazans. On two occasions in my own life, I ran into teens in Germany from Palestine, and both times, they threatened to “kick my ass.” Having come in from Russia, where it is expected to get into fisticuffs on the street with unknown drunks, etc. I was walking home from local beer joints in Munich, and on both occasions, groups of rowdy teens approached me.
Both times, they pushed past me, looking to intimidate me. The sidewalks are narrow in Munich as there is a bike path that pedestrians must stay out of lest a German run them down simply because he has the right of way. As I said, because I was in from Russia and already a bit more responsive to street aggression, I let it be known that I did not appreciate the tussling of my person. On both occasions, the groups approached and threatened to take me on. Once, I was carrying a boiling tea from Starbucks, so I immediately removed the lid. With the steam rising out of the cup, the young men knew that one of them would be scalded.
On the other occasion, the police saw what was happening and immediately drove up. I later learned that the teens were Palestinians who had recently started immigrating to Germany with the Syrian waves.
I am not saying that all Palestinians are this way, but what I am saying is that no Palestinian is going to show any gratitude to silly liberals voting away America’s democracy to show solidarity with their cause.
Sadly, these Our Revolution nut jobs are as thick-headed as MAGidiots, and even sadder yet is that they will never hear such warnings because they are so motivated by their own selfish, small-minded principles.
I respect their desire to push Biden to do the right thing, but if you remove him from office, do you really think Trump will listen to you? Then, the next “Gaza” will be so much more tragic only then will you not have a pot to piss in because American democracy will be dead.