Florida Democrats Are Sinking

As noted here on this blog and elsewhere, Democrats have been getting their posteriors kicked - sometimes with the boots wedged in the orifices pretty darn good - in so many down-ballot races that one wonders why it is the Republicans who are marked for extinction.  And nowhere is the Democrats' trouble more obvious than the state of Florida.  Democrats in the Sunshine State are doing so poorly, it's a wonder President Obama won the state twice.  Because a lot of these losers can't even win once.

  

When Marco Rubio ruled out a run for a second term to the U.S. Senate to concentrate on the Presidency, Democratic prospects for a Senate seat pickup seemed assured . . . until Rubio reversed course and decided to run for another term after all after ending his presidential bid.  He's so far ahead of his Democratic opponent, U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy, in the polls that Democrats have stopped throwing money at the Murphy campaign and are throwing in the towel instead.  Which makes sense, considering Murphy's background; he's a former Republican who has received campaign contributions from an admitted felon, and his father and his family's business donated money to a super-PAC supporting him, under ethically dubious circumstances.

Did I happen to mention a bill Murphy co-sponsored in the House to help his family's business?  You can read all about it here.

Then there's that other former Republican, former governor Charlie Crist, who in 2014 proved to be as ineffective in running as a Democrat against Governor Rick Scott to get his old job back as he was when he ran for the Senate in 2010 as an independent.  Having lost the least loseable gubernatorial election in the 2014 midterm cycle, Crist is now running for the U.S. House of Representatives against Republican incumbent David Jolly, who in 2014 whopped Alex Sink in a special election for the seat (four years after Rick Scott whopped Alex Sink for the governorship).   Crist, in his new role as a professional candidate, showed how out of touch he is with his own would-be constituents by defending Hillary Clinton as someone who's honest and trustworthy during a debate with Jolly.  The audience erupted with laughter.

Then there is Representative Alan Grayson, who has been accused of spousal abuse by his ex-wife and recently lost as much as $18 million of his considerable fortune in an investment scam.  He gave up his House seat to run against Patrick Murphy, the Democratic establishment's choice for the U.S. Senate nomination, and, as you obviously have already figured out, lost. His new wife Dena Minning, whom he married this past May, ran in the Democratic primary for the House seat he gave up to run for the Senate.

She lost.

So did Tim Canova, a Bernie Sanders-type reformer, in his bid for the Democratic nomination for the seat of Florida's Twenty-Third U.S. House District.  The person who beat him?  Incumbent congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Who, as I understand it, is responsible for the many problems and disasters Democrats have had in Florida and elsewhere.

Florida Democrats, for all their efforts to stand tall and proud, are going down faster than the state itself, as sea levels rise.  An historical note: Florida was one of the first states in which the Whigs collapsed after that party's 1852 disaster.   

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.