Trump’s relentless march to the presidential candidacy is bad news for Republicans
Not surprisingly the presidential race is rapidly coming down to a Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton contest.
In the so called Super Tuesday 2, brashness, bigotry and mendacity triumphed once again, with Trump adding Florida, Illinois and North Carolina to his list of primary victories.
In Florida, the crown jewel of the disputed states, the crass billionaire scored a decisive victory taking all 99 delegates and forcing Marco Rubio to drop out of the race. It was another big day for Trump, and were it not for John Kasich’s winning Ohio and Ted Cruz adding a considerable number of delegates, he would have been a hairbreadth away from becoming the Republican nominee.
Trump’s relentless march to the presidential candidacy is bad news for the Republican Party — but very good for Democrats.
Most polls show that either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would defeat the billionaire blowhard in a general election. But after her huge victories in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, and even the hotly contested Missouri, it seems that Clinton — who, pushed to the left by her rival’s progressive message is sounding almost like a Rosa Luxemburg reincarnation —- will be the one entrusted with making the racist Trump bite the dust.
Without a doubt the Hispanic vote, if Clinton is the nominee, will overwhelmingly help her return to Washington, this time as President.
One of the welcome results of the GOP Florida primary was that, just six days before Barack Obama’s trip to Havana, one big obstacle to his Cuba policy went down in flames.
Marco Rubio, the young Florida senator who has been the most vocal opponent of the normalization of relations with Cuba, just saw his presidential ambitions — and perhaps his political future—evaporate after his humiliating defeat at Trump’s hands.
Rubio made his opposition to better relations with Cuba one of the mainstays of his campaign, vowing to “absolutely” reverse Obama’s measures, including closing down the embassies. But while times have changed, Little Marco, as Trump mockingly called him, remained stuck in a Cold War frame of mind that is as anachronistic as the 55-year–old trade embargo to the Caribbean island.
“America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real political tsunami,” Rubio said to his disappointed supporters in Florida. “And we should have seen it coming.”
Yes, they should have, agreed Vicente Dopico, a Cuban-American artist and long time Miami resident.
“He shouldn’t complain or blame the Republican leadership for his failure,” Dopico said. “Rubio is a creature of the Tea Party and they were the ones that initiated the march towards fascism within the Republican Party. He is very much responsible for the conditions that made possible the Donald Trump phenomenon.”
The question now is who will Rubio’s more than 150 delegates support going forward.
Rubio’s downfall despite getting two thirds of the Cuban vote, signals a sea change in the political power of South Florida’s Cuban-Americans. For years they played kingmaker thanks to their ability to deliver hundreds of thousands of votes to the Republican Party.
But a new, more progressive generation of Cuban-American voters, together with an influx of Central and South Americans and Puerto Ricans to the southern state have changed the political landscape. So much so that Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote in the last election, a figure Clinton is expected to surpass come November.
Definitely not good news for the boorish Republican front runner or his party.
(From Al Día News)
