Table for two

As we have seen, the master strategy among the three Democrats that are seeking election to occupy the current Republican seats in congress for the 18th, 21st and 25th districts is to base their campaigns on a small differentiation with regards to Cuba policy. The architect of that policy is one of the candidates, Joe Garcia, who until recently was the chairman of the Democratic party of Miami-Dade County.

The strategy is based on the idea that the candidates are for the trade embargo against Cuba but are against the most recent tightening of the embargo that limited the amount Cuban-Americans could remit to Cuba to $1,200 per year and limited family travel to Cuba to once every three years.

They assert that they oppose those incremental restrictions, which were implemented in 2004 on humanitarian grounds, and also because they think remittances and travel are catalysts to change in Cuba despite no evidence to support that claim. After all, before 2004 we had the same policy they are advocating for now and last time I checked Cuba was a totalitarian dictatorship then too.

So in essence what Joe Garcia and his comrades are trying to do is split hairs. In typical Democrat/liberal fashion they are appealing to voters’ emotions rather than their intellect.

Interestingly, I’m not the only one who sees that this bit stategery is doomed to failure. Another critic of this approach is Democrat pollster Sergio Bendixen. In a NYT article yesterday Bendixen scratches his head at the idiocy:

Mr. Bendixen said. “I don’t get it. It’s turning off more than half the electorate that’s not Cuban, and the people who would benefit from a change are a very small slice of the Cuban electorate. It’s a mistaken strategy.”

This is not the first time that Bendixen warns Democrats about this very matter. In 2004 he was quoted in the Miami Herald:

Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen said trying to siphon Cuban-American votes by advertising against the new Bush policies could hurt Miami in the long run because it would pit generations of Cuban Americans against one another, and could end up backfiring by motivating hard-liners to work against Democrats even more.

“It would be a tremendous mistake,” Bendixen said. “I think there’s a large group of people within the Democratic Party that would like to take advantage of that issue in a very direct way, but I’m going to continue advocating against it.”

It should be noted that the relationship between Bendixen and Garcia is more than the fact they are both Democrats. In fact, Bendixen conducted a poll for Garcia and his then employer in 2006.

So it appears that Joe thinks he’s smarter than even experienced professionals who would like to see him win. This despite the fact that Joe has never even been elected dogcatcher. While we sat at Versailles eating lunch today, I told Val that Joe thinks voters are stupid and, as if by magic, Joedilocks himself appeared in the doorway of the restaurant. He asked for a table with an extra chair so there would be room for his ego.