The New York Times continues to be baffled that Donald Trump won the state of Florida, particularly Trump, who has a significant portion of the Hispanic voice in regions of South Florida like Miami. The newspaper’s reporters were unable to accept the reality, especially their Miami bureau chief Patricia Mazzei, who returned on Sunday in the National Section’s lead story, How Miami’s Politics Swung Right and Blinded the Nation was.
Mazzei cannot escape the cliché that “Latino” equals “Democrat” and used liberal views as the standard basis. Then he questioned the Cuban Americans because they had deviated from that line. The newspaper has never addressed the fact that Cuban Americans vote Republicans because of their anti-communist beliefs, often acquired through direct experience under Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro.
She followed the development of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who reversed the county’s “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrant status. Mazzei was tough:
Critics said he turned to Mr. Trump and turned his back on the county with the second highest number of immigrants in the nation after Los Angeles.
That year, Mr. Gimenez received Mr. Trump’s approval, spoke at one of his rallies and was elected to Congress.
His notable political development reflected a wider shift in Miami-Dade, where 58 percent of voters are Hispanic and Mr Trump made great strides from 2016 to 2020.
Voting Republicans is a problem:
No other place has the same mix of Republican-friendly Hispanics led by conservative Cuban Americans. And the Trump presidency has strengthened its hand, forcing Miami to expect harsh and contradicting truths about immigration, racism and power.
For Mazzei, choosing Biden was synonymous with “foresight” as opposed to hard-hearted Trumpers.
Mr. Trump’s amazing improvement here shocked not only the nation but much of Miami as well. A city that likes to see itself as the future-oriented capital of Latin America.Every local institution has been shaped by immigrants and their children who tended to become more liberal with each generation.
Yet many residents have come to the difficult realization that Miami, even now, is not quite as advanced as they had hoped.
“We used to be more compassionate” said Carmen Peláez, a Cuban-American playwright and filmmaker who campaigned for Mr. Biden.
Another warning sign? Failure to join this summer’s protests (many of which resulted in looting and violence).
Some settlements came in the summer when it was found that relatively few Latinos, especially Cuban Americans, appeared in local protests against police brutality that mirrored others across the country and caused consternation among more liberal Hispanics.
At least the Times uses the label “liberal” – but why does every political position have to be represented by “liberal Hispanics” for approval? She again blamed “misinformation” for Latinos who voted Republicans.
Mr. Trump’s campaign in South Florida was successful in understanding many of these complexities, as well as for a variety of other reasons: He visited them often. The Republicans effectively branded the Democrats as “socialists”. A major misinformation campaign was targeted at Spanish-speaking voters. Mr Biden couldn’t reach Hispanic voters until it was too late.
Finally, she mentioned specific explanations for the Democrats’ failure.
It didn’t help Democrats that some protesters in Miami waved flags depicting Che Guevara – a brutal revolutionary despised by Cuban exiles – and a statue of Christopher Columbus graffitied with a sickle during the summer protests against Black Lives Matter gavel disfigured in the Soviet style.
Mazzei has hit the Florida puzzle before. A post-election story revealed bitterness over Joe Biden’s surprisingly large loss in Florida and unearthed a pathetic excuse: Hispanics were victims of “racist” “disinformation”, according to reporters Mazzei and Nicole Perloth. And to call Biden “moderate” as “socialist” was not an opinion, but a “lie”. In an earlier story by Mazzei and Jennifer Medina, the conservative opinion and campaign hype was deliberately classified as “misinformation” and a dangerous lie.
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