Dumb as a box of rocks: Democrats suddenly realize their Maduro-love will cost them Florida in 2020

For years, Democrats have fallen over themselves to defend Latin American communist dictatorships. Who can forget Rep. Maxine Waters's apology to the Castro regime for the U.S. on her pilgrimage to Cuba or Rep. Jim McGovern's secret collaborations with Colombia's Marxist FARC terrorists or New York mayor Bill de Blasio's "help" to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Sen. Bernie Sanders's open praise for Hugo Chávez's Venezuela? And don't forget Joe Kennedy's Dial Joe-4-Oil, which was a gusher of propaganda praise for Venezuela's oppressive socialist regime.

They've always gotten away with it. Until now.

They suddenly are realizing that the Maduro-lovers and Trump-resisters in their ranks, who happen to be some of their biggest "it" girls with the loudest voices — Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and some others — who have supported Venezuela's detested Maduro regime in recent weeks, as well as old dinosaurs such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was all worried about the U.S. invading Venezuela, and Silent Ted Deutch representing south Florida...are all kissing the purple swing state of Florida goodbye for the Democrats in 2020.

The New York Times reports this development as alarming for Democrats:

Venezuela, not Cuba, now dominates Miami's political conversation. A television anchor not long ago ended a somber segment with a promise to keep praying for the troubled South American country. Venezuelans in the city have gathered for demonstrations to coincide with protests back home. Even the Miami-Dade County Commission, a local body with no control over foreign policy, voted unanimously to recognize the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president.

The shift has been coming on gradually for years, but it has accelerated in recent weeks as Venezuela has sunk further into crisis and its leftist president, Nicolás Maduro, has clung defiantly to power. The showdown in Caracas is reshaping Latino politics in South Florida, home to the highest concentration of Venezuelans in the United States.

I would not count my chickens.

The great Peter Drucker would side more with Monica Showalter's sentiment than with the above. Not in favor of literally "counting chickens" (in the sense of doing nothing), but focusing on opportunity.

As Drucker put it in The Effective Executive, "Don't solve problems. Pursue opportunities."

I think the article's insight is critical to identifying real opportunities in the culture war--and especially cultivating influential Latino groups in Florida and elsewhere who are already believers in the American system and its Constitution. They've seen the tired, corrupt, socialist "future" in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere, and it didn't work.

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