hausmann90_ GASTON DE CARDENASAFP via Getty Images_latinos for trump

Politics

Biden no convenció a Miami

Dec 3, 2020 Ricardo Hausmann and José Ramon Morales-Arilla

CAMBRIDGE – Joe Biden obtuvo una victoria decisiva en la elección presidencial norteamericana, derrotando a Donald Trump por más de seis millones de votos a nivel nacional. Respaldado por votantes suburbanos, especialmente mujeres, el candidato demócrata recuperó Pennsylvania, Michigan y Wisconsin, que Trump había ganado en 2016, dio vuelta Arizona y Georgia y se adjudicó 306 de los 538 votos del Colegio Electoral.

Pero un estado pendular clave donde a Trump le fue mejor que hace cuatro años fue Florida –especialmente en sus zonas más hispanas-. El crecimiento del margen de Trump en Florida entre 2016 y 2020 se explica plenamente por su mejora en Miami.

Si bien Biden hizo incursiones importantes en otras partes de Florida, en Miami –una ciudad que representa más del 10% de la población votante del estado- los demócratas perdieron 23 de los 30 puntos de ventaja que obtuvo Hillary Clinton en 2016. Mientras que el voto al Partido Republicano en Miami creció el 60%, los demócratas obtuvieron un 1% menos de votos que en 2016, a pesar de que la concurrencia a las urnas a nivel estatal creció el 20% y que los demócratas obtuvieron un 21% más de votos que en 2016 en otras partes de Florida.

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Ricardo Hausmann

Writing for PS since 2001
112 Commentaries

Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, is a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Harvard Growth Lab.

José Ramon Morales-Arilla

Writing for PS since 2020
2 Commentaries

José Ramon Morales-Arilla is a PhD candidate in public policy at Harvard University.

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Joe Ryan Dec 11, 2020

How would Fulgencio Batista have voted? How would a center-left administration persuade him?
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Adolfo Villanueva Dec 5, 2020

This paragraph (and the whole article) leaves aside two very important points. First, the very low cultural level of Spanish-speaking countries, Spain included. Second, and more important, Miami is probably the foremost safe haven for SouthAm kleptocrats and crooks, it combines US low tax and high tolerance to deceit with extended use of Spanish.
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Adolfo Villanueva Dec 5, 2020

Venezuela never was a model democracy or a model country. It was a typical SouthAm country, governed by a kleptocratic white ruling class. Probably it is now heavily authoritarian, or even a dictatorship, but kleptocracy is still ruling. A dark skinned one, instead of the previous light skinned, just a cosmetic change.
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眼光 Canadian / China Dec 3, 2020

The State of Florida is Cuba . The virus is out of control there it really does not matter who won this state . The virus will knock down any USA State if the people responsible for the medical do not contr
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Mirek Fatyga Dec 3, 2020

I will not give anyone a practical political advice, as I never ran for anything.

But I will make a philosophical suggestion that can perhaps be transformed into a political message by skilled practitioners.

Revolutions do not just happen. They are not God's arbitrary punishment. They happen because societies become too unstable to function. Sources of instability may vary, but the most common is social inequality that creates large enough pool of people who feel so excluded, so frightened by their bleak and deteriorating future, that they decide that anything is better than the present path. Another way of looking at this: a society that is excessively polarized can no longer be repaired by policy adjustments within a conventional political system. Policy adjustments, by design, are incremental and gradual. Policy adjustments work when the political and economic system oscillates around a reasonable mean, but they fail when the system moves too far away from it. In the market economy, I call it "reaching Point Expropriation", since nothing short of such drastic measures can revert the society to a reasonable mean.

Miami Latinos are descendants of people who, through greed and arrogance, brought their own countries to the point of breakdown. Riding around in their cars with Trump flags, they may very well be pushing the country that offered them refuge in the same direction. Perhaps they need to be educated and brought down to earth a little bit.

People who flee from disintegrating societies often suffer from arrogance that comes from a belief that, unlike the natives, they personally experienced how bad things can get. Refugees from oppressive regimes also tend to moralize excessively, treating their misfortune as a morality tale, rather than a misfortune that had a cause that they, themselves, may have had some hand in.

I know this from personal experience, I came to the US from Poland during the Cold War. If I look at what is happening in Poland today, I can't help but conclude that there were reasons for Poland's misfortune that went way beyond Russian tanks.
- Michael Public Dec 4, 2020
  
  I am of the same 'philosophy' but would like to point out that revolution seldom results in positive change for those disenfranchised by the previous society - it normally leads to chaos, followed by some new strongman/authoritarian government being appointed to 'clean up the mess' - who then in time turns on his own people - creating a military/ police state typically worse than pre-revolution. What follows is mass exodus of all working age people who are not part of the core supporters of the strongman. There is a type of revolution that is excluded from this pattern - when it effectively amounts to throwing off the yoke of some enslaving foreign power to - e.g. as the US did in 1775–1783. It should also be noted that revolutions are often 'caused' by foreign powers engaging in some kind of proxy war. Throughout the Cold War and continuing today many revolutions are essentially sponsored/engineered by the US/Russia to further the reach of their 'empires'.
  - David Lentz Dec 4, 2020
    
    It is interesting that the French Revolution eventually brought a democracy but it took 80 years with swings to tyranny and monarchy in between. Spain had a revolution which fell into tyranny under Franco but now is a democracy. It is interesting this pattern but it took many decades in both cases and enormous suffering
    As Voltaire said paraphrasing
    Man is born free but everywhere is in chains. The chains take different forms
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