Let, Then, the Florida Democratic Party Pass

Insanity is defined by trying the same thing again and expecting the same result.  So, naturally, the Democrats nominated Charlie Crist again for governor . . . and Ron DeSantis wiped the floor with him. 

And despite being an attractive candidate with a solid record in the House, Val Demings could not overcome Marco Rubio in her bid for the Senate.  She was blessed with an opponent who opposed the Medicare prescription-drug price negotiation bill in a state full of retirees, and she still lost badly. 

Oh yeah, can you tell me what Crist and Demings stood for?  I mean, apart from their boilerplate Democratic positions on the issues?  I mean, why did Crist want to be governor a second time after having serve with great undistinction the first time around?  And what made Demings give up her safe House seat, where she could have accrued more seniority and become a member of House leadership, for a Senate seat?  I mean, what motivated her?

These questions will forever remain unanswered,  and another question is why the state's Democrats nominated these two in the first place. 

Oh yeah, Democrats lost the state agricultural commissioner's office to the Republicans in this year's elections, so now they won't have a statewide elected official anywhere, likely never to elect another one.  

I came across this one opinion piece on how the Florida Democratic Party can fix itself,  Quite frankly, it is beyond repair.  And Ron DeSantis will see to it that, even if Florida Democrats should somehow fix themselves, they will never win a statewide election again, thank to DeSantis's voting police to track down, arrest and make an example of (usually black) Florida residents who try to vote illegally ("illegally" meaning purged from the rolls for no good reason and left off because the Democratic Party is too neutered to protect their voting rights).

But no, Florida Democrats will carry on like all of those aging rock stars (that is, all rock stars) that continue touring in the laughable hope that a new generation will re-invigorate rock and roll and allow the Old Guard to retire.  In other words, Florida Democrats are dead.

And they don't even know it.

Sunset for Florida Democrats - The Sequel

Georgia ain't on my mind now.  Let me talk about Florida.

Two weeks ago today, I saw Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and incumbent Florida senator and re-election candidate Bill Nelson come up short in their respective campaigns but by the end of the night, neither race had been called and subsequent recounts had to be held, providing a modicum of hope for Democrats in the Sunshine State.

As of this weekend, however, Ron DeSantis is to be the new governor of Florida, and Rick Scott - who, like Madonna, somehow manged to turn accidental fame into a long career - is the state's new U.S. Senator. 

So what went wrong?  How did the two most loathsome Florida politicians not named Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who, alas, was re-elected to the House) pull off such high-profile wins when much of the rest of the country was turning against Trump Republicanism? The answer is not in the incompetence of Broward County election officials, but rather in three simple facts.  First, Florida is as divided as the country at large.  Second of all, despite Florida's young multiracial population, retirees - most of whom are white - keep moving into the state at a pretty good clip, and even the registered Democrats among them are more conservative than the state's younger and browner residents.  Older people, of course, vote more than younger people, though Florida likely has a lot of young white conservatives - DeSantis, at 40, is one of them.  Third, retirees and working people alike live in Florida for the low taxes as well as the (mostly) sunny weather, and the policies Gillum in particular espoused meant more amenities and, thus, more spending.

Florida has long been seen as the country's most populous swing state.  But is it time to cede Florida to the Republicans?  Probably.  Because after the debacles of centrist candidates for statewide office such as Alex Sink and Patrick Murphy, Florida Democrats tried something new by nominating a black progressive for the governorship even as it renominated a tried-and-true incumbent three-term white moderate senator for re-election.  They both ended up losing, albeit narrowly, to Republicans.  Two different sorts of Democrats . . . losing to Republican opponents . . . in the same state in the same year. 

That show of solidarity Gillum and Nelson had with former President Obama made for good pictures but also made for ineffective politics.

At 76, Bill Nelson is now, like many Floridians his age, retired.  And Gillum?  Pundits are already saying that Gillum isn't going anywhere, though by that they mean that he will remain active in Florida politics.  Really?  As a former mayor of Tallahassee?  That's hardly a springboard for future endeavors for higher office.  Florida doesn't have another election for statewide office until 2022, when Ron DeSantis runs for a second term as governor and Marco Rubio is up for re-election to the Senate.  A rematch between Gillum and DeSantis is unlikely; Democrats never renominate to oppose an incumbent Republican officeholder the guy that incumbent Republican defeated for that office; DeSantis would like nothing better than a rematch with someone he's already creamed once.  And Rubio is such a huge political star that Floridians will keep sending him back to the Senate for as long as he wants to be sent back.  Gillum said that the struggle to move Florida in a more economically and socially just direction wasn't about him.  He's right; by 2022, Florida Democrats will have moved on to someone else.

But who?  Gwen Graham?  (Excuse me while I laugh at the thought of her name.)  Philip Levine, the millionaire businessman who ran for governor in the Democratic primary in 2018 and was mayor of Miami Beach from 2013 to 2017, might want to try again for either the governorship or Rubio's Senate seat.  But even having been mayor of Tallahassee is preferable to being a former mayor of Miami Beach.

So, despite a few key (no pun intended, if you get my drift) U.S. House victories two weeks ago, Florida Democrats are still in the dumps.  And their queen bee, their top honcho, their most visible pol, is still Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Pathetic.         

I have friends and relatives in Florida who keep inviting me to come down there.  In their dreams.  As long as Florida keeps electing bigoted climate-change deniers to office, I plan to boycott Florida completely.  (California orange juice all the way!)  Instead of traveling to Florida, I hope to take a vacation to warm, sunny, exotic . . . Wisconsin! :-D

Congratulations to Wisconsin's incoming Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Sunset for Florida Democrats

I didn't know at first if this meme was made by someone for Martin O'Malley or someone against Martin O'Malley, though the unflattering picture of O'Malley's head that was Photoshopped in suggested the latter. (And it was an anti-O'Malley meme; it's from a conservative Web site.)  Nevertheless, it sums up Florida congresswoman Debbie Wassserman Schultz in a nutshell.

It was three years ago today that then-presidential contender Martin O'Malley called for more Democratic presidential primary debates at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) meeting in Minneapolis, only to be given a death-ray gaze by Wasserman Schultz, then the DNC chair.  After tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton so she could lose to Donald J. Trump, you'd think that Debbie - now running for re-election to the House for the first time since Trump became President - would be punished by Florida Democrats with a robust primary challenger.  Think again, sucka - Debbie is running in today's House primary unopposed, while Democrat Tim Canova, who unsuccessfully challenged her in the 2016 House primary, is running against her as an independent.  Florida Democrats would rather renominate and reward someone who screwed the national party and the country rather than take a chance with someone else in what is a solidly Democratic district.

And Deb's constituents will vote for her because they will be brainwashed into thinking that if they vote for Tim Canova, they're only going to split the vote, help the eventual Republican nominee win, and lessen Democratic chances of taking back the House.

Alas, lameness of the brain among Florida Democrats isn't confined to the 23rd U.S. House district.  The Democratic Party in the Sunshine State managed to allow Republican Rick Scott get elected governor twice by somehow finding nominees even more unelectable than he was; now he's leading in the U.S. Senate election against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson, running for a fourth term.  It seems that Scott has grown on Florida voters, like a wart, almost.  Today, Florida Democrats are expected to nominate for governor Gwen Graham, a former one-term congresswoman with no executive experience whose biggest claim to fame is that she's the daughter of former Florida two-term governor and three-term U.S. Senator Bob Graham.  That is, Florida Democrats are going to nominate her for the same reasons national Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 - her sex and her family name.

And I'll bet Debbie Wasserman Schultz has something to do with this.

Ahh, who cares?  The Democrats should just give up on Florida.  It's not worth fighting for, even though Martin O'Malley, in his unappreciated efforts to help rebuild the Democratic Party, keeps going down there to fight for it.

No.  Give it up, Democrats. Florida is lost.  You're not going to put Gwen Graham in the governor's mansion, and you're not going to save Bill Nelson's sorry hide.  Concentrate on the House nationwide and forget saving Nelson's Senate seat . . . or the Senate.  There may very well be a blue wave in the November elections, but the only blue wave that's going to wash over Florida is going to be from a Category 5-plus hurricane.  Never mind Florida, Democrats, climate change and rising sea levels are going to push it into the sea anyway.

In which case, the 49-star flag that was only our official flag for one year may very well make a comeback.