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To make it less abstract, Cuban-Americans are heavily concentrated in Florida and so are an important constituency there. Easing sanctions on Cuba is not someth

To make it less abstract, Cuban-Americans are heavily concentrated in Florida and so are an important constituency there. Easing sanctions on Cuba is not something they want, in the aggregate. Politicians that want Florida therefore don't want to do it. Party leadership (for both parties, but most importantly the Republicans) therefore doesn't push for it because it's such a losing issue. Essentially there is imagined to be no upside politically to easing on Cuba, while the downside is very clear (you lose Florida). I'm not sure how we could move Cuban-Americans somewhere else unless you are suggesting forced relocations to other parts of the U.S.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
I don't disagree about your analysis of the politics but I still think the math just doesn't pencil out. On the other side of the issue from all those Cubans who don't want normalized relations is business interests that do. Levis wants to sell them jeans. Apple wants to sell them phones. GM wants to sell them truck. Raytheon wants to sell them radar systems. There's just so much money to be made when a formerly isolated market become unlocked that I think you could win back Florida and more with all the donations from the big corporations that would stand to benefit from normalized relations with Cuba. I think the only reason nothing happens is because there's no one sector that really stands to benefit and can make a concentrated lobbying effort whereas the people that don't want it are a unified ethnic group which for the purposes of high level political analysis can roughly be seen as a voting block. Ditto all this for Iran, but move all the decimals to the right once or twice.
- aetherson 4y ago
  Cuba is a poor, small country. They can't buy very significant quantities of jeans or phones. (11.3M people, per capita GDP $9,500 or so.)
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    I also wouldn't discount the power of inertia in public policy. Why spend capital on this relatively minor issue when we can just keep the status quo going indefinitely with no debate?

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

I don't disagree about your analysis of the politics but I still think the math just doesn't pencil out. On the other side of the issue from all those Cubans who don't want normalized relations is business interests that do. Levis wants to sell them jeans. Apple wants to sell them phones. GM wants to sell them truck. Raytheon wants to sell them radar systems. There's just so much money to be made when a formerly isolated market become unlocked that I think you could win back Florida and more with all the donations from the big corporations that would stand to benefit from normalized relations with Cuba. I think the only reason nothing happens is because there's no one sector that really stands to benefit and can make a concentrated lobbying effort whereas the people that don't want it are a unified ethnic group which for the purposes of high level political analysis can roughly be seen as a voting block. Ditto all this for Iran, but move all the decimals to the right once or twice.

aetherson 4y ago
Cuba is a poor, small country. They can't buy very significant quantities of jeans or phones. (11.3M people, per capita GDP $9,500 or so.)
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  I also wouldn't discount the power of inertia in public policy. Why spend capital on this relatively minor issue when we can just keep the status quo going indefinitely with no debate?