Coop Scoop: The F-Word, Biden and a Cuban Reverie Edition

Voting rights must be defended. Here and in Cuba.

July 15, 2021

By Marc Cooper

That was a good speech Joe Biden made the other day about voting rights. A very good one.

It was also very late in this critical game that radical Republicans have foisted on the nation. Late, and frankly, too little.

There’s no mystery regarding this issue and what is to be done about it.. There is only one solution. And that is to eliminate the filibuster or at least carve out an exception for banning it on constitutional bills. But Biden could and would not as much as mention that F-word.

The dramatic action of the Texas House Democrats who for the second time broke quorum to stop passage of a GOF voting restriction bill to flee to Washington to lobby for federal voter protection legislation only serves to underline the limp response by the national party.

These Texas legislators are only part-time and make an average of $7000 a year, meaning that many of them have other day jobs. Staying out of Texas for nearly a month to avoid arrest by the Governor means some real sacrifice and real commitment.

That’s more than what I see the Biden administration and Chuck Schumer doing. The $25 million the White House announced it was dedicating to a public education campaign about voting is, I am sorry, a joke. It is a paltry sum of money with very nebulous intended outcomes.

“Do the math, the votes aren’t there” is the mantra repeated by Jim Carville and other defenders of the most ossified sectors of the party. Well, he’s right. Sort of. ‘The votes” are not cast in cement. They can change. They often do,

Not having the fifty votes today is the best reason to fight today to change that. Taking down the filibuster would be the best manifestation of a successful voting rights movement. That movement is hardly as robust as it should be and that is due in great part to the refusal of the Democratic Party to assist in building it and also owes to the reluctance of some liberals and others to organize independently of a Democratic administration.

Fine. So long as you understand that if current trends prevail there will be no effective voter protection bill coming out of the Congress and we will be going into a rather treacherous mid term cycle unprepared to fight off the Republican attack on democracy.

CUBA

The events in Cuba demonstrate that some sectors of the Left are as prone to conspiracy theorizing as are those on the Right. I saw more facebook posts than I could stand bluntly affirming that disorder in Haiti and Cuba in the same week PROVES the CIA is destabilizing these countries. No proof is offered.

Clearly, US foreign policy has supported numerous dictatorships in Haiti (as well as a bungled return to democracy in 1995) and the ghastly American record on Cuba is self-evident.

US policy, however, does not rob either Cubans or Haitians of their agency. When Cubans get up every morning in 2021, they do not need the CIA to tell them that food is in great scarcity, that consumer items are unreachable unless you have hard currency, that the Cuban government has rejected international aid for COVID and only about 20 percent of the population is vaccinated.

Nor do they need the CIA to tell them that the state has permitted NO civil liberties in its 62 years of one party rule, that protests are banned, that dissident thought or writing can land you in jail and that the physical infrastructure in the country collapsed a couple decades ago.

The double standard applied by some American lefties really defies any understanding. They are willing to raise hell, as they should, over any infringement on voting and civil rights here at home, but have no problem defending a regime that has banned and crushed all political opposition and that functions outside the rule of law, as do all dictatorships. Their justification is the simplistic “the enemy of my enemy” theory.

Many Americans on the Left insist that Cuba’s economic situation owes strictly to the US trade embargo. The embargo is one of the most grotesque and ineffective tools in US foreign policy history and while it has aggravated the Cuban economy, it does not excuse the monumental mismanagement by the regime that has rendered Cuba a basket case. You can start with Fidel Castro nationalizing 100% of small business in 1965 right down to shoe shiners and snow cone vendors. Add to that a thousand other errors, plus the delusion that socialism could be built in one small underdeveloped island nation and you get the outcome we have.

Just for the record, Cuba has economic relations with most of the world including Europe and has ceded generous investments to Mexico, Netherlands, Canada and Spain among many other nations. It is no stranger to global capitalism and the regime is more than happy to literally rent out its low wage labor force to foreign capitalists who invest in Cuba (Similar to the way Cuba rents out and exports thousands of doctors for hard currency and pretends these are volunteer missions of solidarity).

Yes, I know that disorder in Cuba has warmed the hearts of the exile community in Florida and has given voice to some of its most conservative leaders. I also think that if and when the regime falls, it will fall toward the Right.

This seems inevitable at least in the short run. This, too, is a responsibility of an intransigent, brittle and obsolete regime. The Cuban Communist Party has had umpteen opportunities over the last two decades to begin some sort of gradual transition so that health care and education could be maintained while moving toward a political liberalization.

But make no mistake. The Cuban government is still controlled from over the horizon by 90 year old Raul Castro and his fellow embalmed Stalinists. The current 60 yr old president of Cuba is his mouthpiece and proved it on Sunday when he appeared on national TV to brand all protesters as “criminals” and as pawns of US Imperialism while he called out organized pro-regime groups to take the streets to confront the protesters.

It is crucial to give full and unqualified support to those protesting against the Cuban dictatorship. The hesitancy of some liberal Americans to express their support unless they are sure the protesters are not right wingers or (God Forbid) pro-U.S. is one of the most offensive things I have come across in years.

The Cuban population is very very young. The average age of the protesters is probably somewhere in the low 20’s. Look at the photos and videos to find a radically disproportionate number of young and Black among them (yes, Cuba “abolished” racism by decree a long time ago but it still thrives in everyday life). Like any Cuban under 60 years of age, they have known only the stultifying politics of the current regime and the limits imposed on their futures. How can anybody expect that Cubans, who have suffered permanent austerity and total lack of civic and political rights in the name of Socialism since 1959, should now consider themselves socialists as they combat the regime? Really?

The American Left has whistled past the graveyard of the Cuban Revolution as it decayed, degraded and died over the last 25 years. How can it expect now to have any influence in a post-Communist Cuba? The Cubans are acutely aware of who stands in solidarity with them, and who instead backs the authoritarian organs of State Security.

By the way, my position on Cuba derives from more than a dozen visits to the island since the late 70’s, a lot of deep reporting, and a lot of great information from my Cuban network of friends.

That network came into being in the late 1980’s and I could count 16 Cuban writers and journalists in it. Every one of them was a “revolutionary,” i.e. somebody who had supported the revolution. One was the son of a founder of the Cuban Communist Party. Another one had sent his son to Moscow for university and he wound up as an officer in the Red Army. Another friend was a former counter-intelligence agent who was working for the literary magazine of the Ministry of the Interior. And so on….

Over the last two decades, three of these friends have passed away. All of the 13 others left Cuba. Some went to Spain. Others to Mexico. A few to Florida.

I was alongside them, on and off, as their reaction to the society around them evolved. When I first met them in the 80’s. all supported the government but all with a lot of criticism. Over the years, as hopes for some moderation in the political sphere waned, the criticism mounted. Eventually, it became impossible for this group of friends to continue in Cuba. It was too asphyxiating.

The Cuban protests also riled Joe Biden who had been hoping he would not have to deal with anything Cuban. It’s outrageous that Biden let Donald Trump’s last-minute severe sanction regime stand during his first six months in office.

There was no justification for Trump’s clamp down other than to be an asshole.

Now, Biden has to do something about Cuba but he is at the epicenter of cross currents. His administration, left on its own, would probably incline more toward the Obama era position of liberalization. On the other hand, Biden might be tempted to make a play for Florida by taking a hard line and pandering to the Dade County exiles. The latter would be a great mistake but is a real possibilty.

One thing is for sure. Biden cannot be very enthusiastic about a regime change in Cuba, despite the fever dreams of some American comrades. He knows very well that a total upheaval in Cuba would produce a migratory tsunami and in that case he would prefer to coexist with the regime-as-is.

Now what? +

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