A week from today the Florida Democratic Party is going to choose its new Chair. A few years ago, Florida like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania was considered a purple state. No more. 

What caused Florida’s deviation? Faulty Democratic Party leadership. Like it or not to counteract the abundant right-wing forces that make Florida their home, the main force of opposition is the State’s Democratic Party. But what hindered the Democratic Party from being a force to counteract the rapidly increasing rightwing volume of the Republican Party? Very simple, the Florida Democratic Party failed to distinguish itself politically from a Republican Party that every day gives thinking Floridians a view of what Fascism would look like. 

The governor of the State, Ron DeSantis, who has presidential ambitions is using Florida as a laboratory to promote his Fascist ideas, and the Democratic Party, instead of focusing in combating those ideas it engaged in a coco maniac battle with the Republican Party meant to show Floridians that they are more anti-socialist than the Republicans, as if many people cared. 

It could be argued that the Democratic Party leadership was focusing in attracting the South Florida vote. This area of the State is heavily populated with many people that came from countries with left-wing governments. 

But who are these people? These people were the “Republicans” from the country they came from. These were the people that favored unequal income distribution, racism, poorly funded public schools, poor healthcare, and all the other malignancies that Republicans promote here. 

True that many of those people are not part anymore of the upper classes but for a significant number of them their dream is to return to their homeland and recuperate all the lost privileges. 

Instead of focusing on the needs of the majority of the people of the State and their battle for affordable housing, healthcare, proper funding for public schools and combating the orgy of gun-related crimes the leadership of the Party seemed to be more concerned about stopping “encroaching socialism,” than in taking care of the issues that affect the people of the State. 

The leading candidate to win the Chair of the Party next week is Annette Taddeo, a former State Senator, who ran unsuccessfully for Florida’s 27th CD. I volunteered for Annette’s campaign for the State Senate in 2017. 

Her campaign then was full of hope and support for the issues that affect common folks. She won that seat with plenty of support from Labor Unions. When Ms. Taddeo announced that she was going to run for the 27th Congressional seat I thought she was a shoo-in to win the seat. I thought she will run the kind of campaign that she ran in 2017. Nope. She ran a campaign focusing on battling “encroaching socialism.” And of course, she lost. 

Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the former purple states, ended up in the Blue side of the equation because they campaigned on issues that affected regular common folks. John Fetterman, the antithesis to his Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz, campaigned under the motto “Every County, Every Vote.” 

People felt the love not the nostalgia of lost privileges.