Minority rule

The Cuban immigrant population in Florida has controlled the fate of Cuba for decades. 

While Biden ended or reversed a number of Trump-era policies upon taking office, including the U.S. exit from the Paris climate deal and the so-called Muslim travel ban, former President Obama's former vice president has kept in place Trump-era restrictions on Cuba following Obama's openings to the island nation.

The administration has said it's reviewing the country’s policy on Cuba and hasn’t publicly ruled out changes. But the retention of Trump's policies so far also follows deeply disappointing results for Democrats among Latino voters in Florida, where Cuban Americans are a vital voting bloc.

  The Hill

Did they vote for Obama?

Democrats’ troubles in Florida were put into stark relief in November when Trump carried the state for a second time, helped out by big gains in the Miami area, a traditional Democratic stronghold where roughly 7 in 10 residents are Latino. In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade County by nearly 30 percentage points, while Biden carried it last year by less than 8 points.

Trump’s better-than-expected performance in Miami-Dade came down to several factors. For one, he campaigned there for years and embraced Spanish-language outreach efforts. At the same time, Spanish-speaking voters in South Florida found themselves targeted by disinformation campaigns in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

And Cubans pay the price.

“You have to ask yourself: what do we get for going back to the pre-Trump approach to Cuba?” one Florida Democratic strategist said. “The answer is nothing. The Cuba issue doesn’t play anywhere in the country but Florida, and here I think it’s a liability to say ‘let’s normalize relations with Cuba.’ ”

“It’s not going to win you any votes, but it will lose you votes,” the strategist added. “I think this is kind of an admission of that.”

It's still wrong to punish Cuba.

Biden vowed on the campaign trail to reverse the Trump administration’s policies on Cuba, arguing that the former president’s hard-line stance had “done nothing to advance democracy and human rights” and had instead made the situation on the island worse.

But since taking office in January, neither Biden nor his administration has signaled a willingness to return to the Obama-era policies of detente. At a briefing in March, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

[...]

In perhaps the clearest sign to date that Biden has no immediate plans to reverse his predecessor’s Cuba policy, the State Department renewed a determination made under the Trump administration that Cuba is “not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts.”

Such bullshit.

Nelson Diaz, the chair of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, said that any effort by the Biden administration to reverse Trump’s policies on Cuba would “prove to us that they are communist sympathizers or socialists.” By sticking to the line set by the Trump administration, Diaz said, Biden may be able ease the concerns of at least some Cuban Americans.

Cuban Americans are an even smaller minority than are Republicans in general, and yet, they're controlling our foreign policy with regards to Cuba. It's as ridiculous as it is wrong.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.