Can the Florida Democratic Party pull itself together?
Well before the Red Army sacked Berlin and Adolf Hitler committed suicide, the unlikely alliance of communists and capitalists that won World War II in Europe was disintegrating as the centrifugal force of its internal contradictions waxed in direct proportion to the waning of the common danger that had called it into existence.
A similar fate may await the equally unlikely Joe Biden alliance of progressives, traditional liberals, anti-Trump conservatives and independents that defeated Donald Trump.
This is particularly true in Florida, where the Biden coalition unexpectedly fell far short of victory in embarrassing contrast to neighboring Georgia, a heretofore red state bastion that was stormed by urban Black and suburban white voters led by Stacey Abrams and a host of activist organizers.
This newest humiliation has reanimated the biennial identity crisis in a Florida Democratic Party grown accustomed to defeat and impotent selfanalysis. The current party chairwoman, Terrie Rizzo, has announced she will not seek re-election in a contest she could not win, and there is a growing slate of candidates to replace her, including the Cuban-American establishment favorite, former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, Cynthia Chestnut, a former legislator from Gainesville, and Nikki Barnes, a grassroots party activist from rural Wakulla County.
Compared to the restive and angst-ridden Democrats, Florida Republicans are positively placid. Content in the cat bird seat, they enjoy a baleful unanimity as to their desired end and the optimum means of achieving it. The end is power for power’s sake, and the means are exacerbating and exploiting fear — fear of socialists real and imagined, of voters who are not white, of immigrants of any color, of elites who look down on them, of protestors who call them out, of foreigners who compete with them, of all those who take a dim view of institutionalized minority rule, and of the future generally, which explains the reactionary Make America Great Again mantra.
In short, Republicans like the status quo. And flags. Republicans really like flags of all kinds, waving them with giddy abandon at rallies and parades.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is a Star
Wars bar of contentious special interests groups. Hispanic advocacy groups jostle with Asian-American advocacy groups that jostle with Black advocacy groups that jostle with women’s advocacy groups that jostle with gay rights advocacy groups in pursuit of plum appointments in the incoming Biden administration. Factions are riven by factions: trans supportive feminists clash with TERFs (trans exclusive radical feminists), Black women claim pride of place over Black men in voting prowess and the debt owed to them by the party, and Black Lives Matter originalists grumble about white folks appropriating the cause of racial justice.
The circles of identity zealots and diehard supporters of the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, student loan forgiveness, mandatory paid parental leave, abortion rights, critical race theory and more all overlap in a Venn diagram of bewildering complexity called intersectionality, at least nominal deference to which is the price of a seat at the Democrat leadership table.
And speaking of leadership, at the national level Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez inhabit the borderlands of Marxism, while Sen. Joe Manchin and Rep. Abigail Spanberger might be mistaken at times for moderate Republicans. In
Florida, state Rep. Anna Eskamani is the avatar of full-tilt boogie progressivism, but her fervor contrasts sharply with the more measured and moderate voices of party leaders like former Congresswoman Gwen Graham and Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried. All three women are potential gubernatorial candidates in 2022.
It is too soon to predict the outcome of this latest metamorphosis of the Florida Democratic Party, whether it will produce an improved and expanded Biden coalition led by an able establishment figure or a more ideologically pure and organizationally disciplined grassroots party led by left-wing crusaders. But Democrats need to figure out who they want to be sooner than later and then get busy big time. Bringing Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio to book in 2022 for their malfeasance and moral cowardice during the Trump presidency is going to be a very rough row to hoe, particularly with Trump in residence at Mar-a-Lago, tanned (after a fashion), rested and ready to rumble.