After the most recent election debacle in Florida and the ritual resignation of the state party leaders associated with it, former agriculture commissioner (and Charlie Crist primary opponent) Nikki Fried stepped up to run for state party chair and won. Lots of folks were skeptical of Fried, and not wholly without reason, but maybe Fried is just what our demoralized state party needs. (Orlando Sentinel)
TALLAHASSEE — Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book were arrested and taken away in handcuffs Monday night during a demonstration over an abortion bill outside Tallahassee City Hall near the Capitol.
The two Democratic leaders were with about 40 abortion-rights advocates protesting the Senate’s passage on Monday of SB 300, which bans most abortions after six weeks. Eleven protestors sitting in a circle singing “Lean on Me” on the plaza outside City Hall were detained and taken to jail, witnesses said.
They were charged with trespass after warning and taken to the county jail for processing, according to a statement from the Tallahassee Police Department.
Shortly after midnight, Fried tweeted: “I’m out. And not ever backing down. Just [expletive] vote @FlaDems!!!”
DeSantis will soon sign a so-called “heartbeat bill” that will effectively make abortion illegal in Florida and rob about 11 million Florida women of their bodily autonomy and consign us to second-class citizenship and substandard medical care. So yeah, it’s good to see the state party leader out there raising hell.
I don’t know if a more activist approach will turn things around anytime soon, but damn it, it’s a start. And it’s a refreshing change from the usual suspects huddled around conference room tables in Miami poring over useless reports from expensive consultants. Go Nikki!
bbleh
Gosh, I don’t know, I mean, if Democrats start getting all “activist,” why then Republicans might start doing that too, and then where will we be? Something something sensible middle reach across the aisle something.
Elizabelle
A good Lauren B. We need someone to redeem the name.
Ken
I saw this in the national news this morning. I have been waiting for Florida Dems to start doing something, and I am encouraged and excited! Coming home to Gainesville after 25 years away, I have had friends tell me lots of opinions on the FL Democratic Party. Niki wasn’t spoken of highly. But gosh, I like this fire and want to see more. Count me in!
OzarkHillbilly
Arresting politicians for breaking the law! We told you if you guys messed with trump we’d do the same to you! How do you like dem apples??? Huh????
eta: wait a minute, it’s OK for GOPers to arrest DEMs, we’ve been doing it for decades.
Trivia Man
Just
Vote
especially in Wisconsin today
RedDirtGirl
Also saw that DeSaniflush signed the permitless gun-carry bill.
WereBear
Women have learned to cut to the chase. We have too much to do as it is.
tobie
Things in Florida are so bad that anything that breaks the ice of complacency is welcome news.
I don’t understand what’s happening in Florida, and am hesitant to blame the electoral losses on Charlies Christ since Val Demings lost her race too, but I suspect that a big problem is that Latinos in the state have come to identify strongly with the Republican Party. Yes, Cuban Americans in South Florida were always Republican but now Venezuelans and Puerto Ricans in the I4 corridor have followed suit.
Baud
I know Florida has a lot of old people, but does it not have a lot of young people too? Or are the young people more conservative there?
rikyrah
@RedDirtGirl:
Absolutely insane.
NotMax
@Baud
Apparently you’ve never watched The Good Place. “Bortles!”
:)
Betty Cracker
@Baud: We’re losing younger folks and gaining people who are 50 and up as a percentage of the population — not by huge amounts, but the trend has been in that direction for a decade. It’s hard to generalize about the politics of any particular age cohort since it varies so much by region.
ETA: the 50 and up population is over 40%, which I think is a lot? Not really sure how it compares to other states, but I’ve always assumed it’s one of the oldest.
ARoomWithAMoose
@Baud: Like everywhere else in the USA, the youngs in Florida don’t vote.
Over at LGM there’s the occasional chart that shows up on Florida threads that shows how the 55+ population has steadily risen while the 18-35, 35-55 population has remained almost constant.
Florida itself has close to 2.5 times the population it did in 1980, very few of the new arrivals are invested in improving the place or even quite understand what the “good” stuff is beyond the winter weather not trying to kill you.
WereBear
@tobie: Brian Tyler Cohen now has a Spanish channel for his reports, and I like him a lot. He’s had Glenn Kirshner on regularly to talk on the legal problems of the Rabid Cheeto.
He’s actually doing something about outreach.
Geminid
@rikyrah: I call these permitless concealed carry laws “Charles Bronson laws,” after his role in the movie Death Wish. Polling showed that a clear majority of people in Texas, Florida and other states opposed them. They could only pass because of gerrymandering.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
According to this, FL is 5th oldest.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/oldest-states
Jackie
Did you see this BC? Reposting from the dead thread:
“Months since it took effect, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature law to censor books in Florida schools has found an unintended target: his own book,” the Daily Beast reports.
“In a clever bit of trolling, Florida Democrats are subjecting DeSantis’ new tome—The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival—to the rules that he and GOP lawmakers established to weed out books with allegedly inappropriate content on race, sexuality, and gender from school libraries.”
From the Political Wire.
WereBear
@Baud: In some areas the old people outnumber the young by a startling margin, and I believe the situation has only gotten worse.
The Florida story is to keep the poor even poorer because only the rich are treated like citizens. A former teacher gave it up to get a law degree and fight for justice in Tallahassee. We kept in touch for a while.
I admired her but if she got some it’s hard to believe it.
catclub
@ARoomWithAMoose:
schools and libraries. neighborhoods that don’t flood.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I’m afraid worse is coming on the gun front. Letting everyone run around with concealed weapons with no license or training isn’t good enough for the hardcore gun-humpers, who want open carry so they can intimidate people in public.
An open carry activist secretly recorded DeSantis at a book signing, where he said he would sign an open carry bill if one arrived on his desk and implied the statehouse would not pass such a bill. Everyone knows that’s bullshit — the statehouse is a rubber stamp for DeSantis.
So now I figure there’s a gun nut movement afoot to get an open carry bill to DeSantis, just like religious fanatics in the statehouse quickly whipped up a bill imposing a 6-week abortion ban after passing a 15-week ban last year.
ian
@ARoomWithAMoose:
To be traded with things that are trying to kill you that cannot survive winter climates.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I’ll be darned!
catclub
@Baud:
I was going to look at life expectancy and relate that to old people living longer, but that would be totally wrong. WV is one of the five oldest states and also one of the 5 with lowest life expectancy.
So I guess the explanation is those places are where the young people move away.
Ramalama
I’m reminded of the Stonewall Inn protest in NYC that spurred the LGBT movement taking off.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: In Atlanta gun crime among gangs has grown, or at least it appears that way. Every morning the local news reports more murders. I think that should be an issue that the democrats can seize.
Matt McIrvin
Gee, I’m concerned that arresting and cuffing her is breaking a norm!
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I loved the Florida jokes in The Good Place.
@Jackie: I did see that. Ha!
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: While COVID might have had a recent effect that’s different, I think the variations in life expectancy in the US are mostly about young and middle-aged people dying at horrific rates–infant and child mortality, drugs and violence. There isn’t as much variation in life expectancy for the people who make it to age 60 intact.
edit: or maybe the more relevant number is 65: Medicare eligibility
WereBear
In my case, it was the weather trying to kill me. My skin cannot cope with heat and humidity. It swells up and attempts a murder like that poor Bond girl in Goldfinger.
Ken
As a challenge to the Juicers, “Fighting Dems, in Florida” has the right tempo for the first line of “Ballad of the Green Berets”.
delphinium
@Baud: Thanks for that-very interesting. For some reason, was surprised to see that NH was 2nd (thought that would have been VT or WV). And also that PA was in the top 10.
gvg
Apparently the fewer young people is a national thing. It tends to get blamed on women’s working and empowerment but that is too symplistic of course. People including women say they want more children, but don’t have them. We know why here. Child care, job conflicts and economics. Now that the extreme attacks on womens healthcare are coming, it’s also clear that it is unsafe to get pregnant in a red state. Comparing US maternity results with other countries seems to show we were getting substandard care even before this time. This means that some of our decline of live births is being caused by the people who claim to be pro life and want to increase births. Unsurprising since they don’t let facts get in their way.
The other factor is that immigration has practically stopped. It had slowed way before this time, gradually so most people had not noticed and were still all worked up about it. People who are otherwise good liberal democrats still reflexively want to support American made, talk about unions and say worry about allowing immigration when their families have jobs…(I am talking about relatives here) Its very hard for even smart democratic politicians to support immigration all the time in all the ways and the way it has been cut is back door by cutting funding to the agencies that process the paperwork. if it takes 10 or 20 years to get approved, people give up and don’t come. Spouses of Americans are being denied which is outrageous. It wasn’t just Trump who showed a mean unfriendly face to potential immigrants either and that really shut the door.
Our own citizens just did not understand anymore how much we always got out of our adopting new citizens all the time, not to mention how much other countries wasted by not doing it.
As a woman I want my rights back and I want healthcare improved. As an American for prosperity I need people to understand our relationship with immigration.
James E Powell
@Ken:
How many people pronounce Florida with three syllables.
eclare
@gvg: I’m still waiting on my taco truck. Pout.
There are many economic and non-economic reasons to support immigration.
NotMax
@Ken
Mayhaps someone will run a version up the flagpole for Florida titled Ballad of the Mouseketeers.
;)
Kay
US “free speech” Substackers came out in support of the Canadian truckers but can’t be bothered to defend the political speech rights of these 40 women.
Is there any group that does more “virtue signaling” than the very selective free speech warriors?
Insufferable. And useless.
Anonymous At Work
@Betty Cracker: If I ever had to come up with a Halloween costume, I’d go as a Florida Driver’s License. Nothing scarier than the Daytona Speedway Rejects mixing it up with 90 year old “Grey Dawn” snowbirds and the Quebecois.
And yes, Jason Mendoza’s lines were incredibly on-point for Florida Man. Like his high school, Lynyrd Skynyrd High. chef’s kiss.
UncleEbeneezer
Kay
Less than 6 months ago women were being tendentiously lectured by national pundits who predicted anti choice religious fundamentalists would ban abortion after 15 weeks thereby cleverly moderating on that issue.
None of them did that. None. They went as absolutely far Right as they could possibly go, up to fake “exceptions” for rape and health of the mother than no woman ever qualifies for or will qualify for- the “exceptions” are a huge lie.
Almost Retired
@tobie: I get why (sort of) the Cubans and Venezuelans identify with the Republican party, which does a good job of conflating the governments they are fleeing with the Democrats. But Puerto Ricans? Can’t quite figure out why the Republican party gains so much support from the islanders.
Kay
I have a suggestion for a paid reporter. Go out and look for a single instance where any woman in one of these states was granted an “exception” from the abortion laws.
I will bet 500 bucks not a single exception exists, because the exceptions are a lie, like everything else the anti choice religious fundamentalists say. There are no real world “exceptions” to these laws- not for anything- certainly not for health or life of the mother. It is just a matter of time before they kill a pregnant woman- they probably already have- the coverage sucks so much no one would know.
Jackie
Ha! While TFG’s getting arrested, Hillary will be honored at a dinner 10 blocks away from Trump Tower.
Says the NYT, so I can’t open/link.
Bugboy
I can’t say that the former Agriculture Commissioner ran a compelling campaign, but to most people she was a nobody, and that mean Crist was going to get the nomination every time. But from my view from nowhere, working in an industry regulated by the very agency she headed, it was like night and day when she assumed office.
After years and years of mosquito control industry support whittled away (literally down to one guy, who showed up to work one day to find they’d rented his office space out from under him), you could tell there was a new boss at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, because they went back to actually, you know, doing their jobs. Zika was the wakeup call to anyone who was paying attention.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Thaddeus Stevens was also an industrialist. When Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, General Early’s forces came upon a ironworks owned by Stevens. The locals pleaded with Early not to destroy it, said Stevens made no money off it and kept it operating only to provide jobs for the community.
“That’s not the way Yankees do business,” Early responded, and he ordered his men to put the factory to the torch.
Stacy
@tobie: I’ve heard that Florida talk radio is flooded with Spanish language right-wing propaganda stations.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: They were awfully quiet about book bans, laws criminalizing peaceful protest and TFG’s open assault on BLM protestors too. The people who virtue signal and identify as “Free Speech” absolutists, are really into making sure that Nazis always have a bullhorn and a heckler’s veto on our society. The “Freeze Peach” posturing is so often just a transparent argument for enabling Fascism, that it’s been a running online joke going back to GamerGate. It’s right up there with “ethics in gaming journalism” as a reliable sign that the person espousing it is probably a Nazi.
Betty Cracker
@Almost Retired: I don’t know for sure either, but I suspect it’s a couple of things. 1) The FL GOP simply out-hustled FL Dems on Latino outreach. Even horrid scumbags like Rick Scott are smart and disciplined about it and show up year round. 2) If Spanish is the primary language, new arrivals might get sucked into Spanish language right-wing media, which is a big thing, especially in South FL. I heard rumors that someone was buying up those stations, but if they changed the content, I haven’t heard about it.
JPL
@Stacy: I’m on antenna and a local Spanish station aired trump’s Waco speech
There is a belief that we came here legally, so they won’t bother us. There was also a belief that Hitler was only concerned about the Eastern European Jewish people.
WereBear
@Anonymous At Work: Florida roads tends to be flat and straight. Except for Alligator Alley, it provides some room for inattention.
Especially compared to mountain roads, which twist and turn like some twisty turny thing. I had to up my game year-round.
And after all that speedway practice on the LIE.
H.E.Wolf
“I don’t know if a more activist approach will turn things around anytime soon, but damn it, it’s a start.”
http://www.PostcardsToVoters.org agrees with you, and will soon be writing postcards – as they have done since 2017 – to remind FL Democrats to sign up (or renew) their Vote By Mail status. Statistically, FL Vote By Mail folks participate in more elections than those who vote at the polling places.
Would-be writers can text JOIN to (484) 275-2229, or go to the website to learn more.
WereBear
@Bugboy: Thank you for reason #infinity why living in a red state is so dangerous for everyone in it. Do these jerks think there’s a dome over their house? Over their office? Do they have tunnels like Montreal?
Kay
lol. Someone finally held Donald Trump accountable and will you look at that! The world didn’t end.
He can’t hurt us when he’s not President. It’s indicting a sleazy real estate developer- barely causes a ripple in such a big country.
WereBear
@Stacy: They needed another population to subdue. Their old one is literally aging out. Time to flood another zone with propaganda.
The Moar You Know
That pic of Ms. Book in cuffs is going to be worth nine figures or more for Dems in 2024. Post that shit everywhere.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Republicans also have had an energetic social media effort targeting Spanish speakers since at least 2019. Some people were raising the alarm about this in summer of 2020, but the Biden campaign was short of money until the fall, and had to play catch up.
UncleEbeneezer
@Almost Retired: Somebody, somewhere used the term “Latinx.” So they have no choice but to vote for Nazis* /sarcasm
* I kid, but there are relatively smart people who sadly think that this is a defensible reason for Cisgender Latinx voters to support the GOP, rather than a ridiculous excuse that would only be used by someone who really wants to be a Republican anyways, and just needs a bullshit cover story for doing so. It’s the modern version of the “so now I’m outraged about Chappaquiddick” joke.
rikyrah
@Kay:
We were being hysterical. Didn’t we know that there was a ‘middle ground’. When we told them that they weren’t interested in it, and all the bills popped up to support what we were saying and they couldn’t ‘BOTH SIDES’ it…
that’s when they stopped reporting on it altogether – telling us that it really wouldn’t be an issue in 2022.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Don’t exist.
Almost Retired
@Betty Cracker: That makes sense. The California Republican party, on the other hand, decided to demonize the state’s largest demographic. That worked well for them….
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: A lot of the discourse concerning Latinx vs. Latinono is influenced by a poll commissioned by Democratic strategist Sergio Bendixen that was published a couple years ago. The poll asked Spanish speaking voters to self-identify and 2% chose “Latinx,” ~30% chose “Latino,” and over 60% picked “Hispanic”
Bendixen’s poll showed that 40% disapproved of the term “Latinx,” and 30% said they would be less likely to vote for a politician using that word to describe their community.
Of course, this is just one poll, and Bendixen may have had it set up to support his premise that Democratic politicians using “Latinx” were committing “political malpractice.”
But the poll got a lot of attention at the time, and I haven’t yet read of one that contradicts it. Rep. Ruben Gallego jumped into the Twitter debate that followed by saying his office had a policy against the use of “Latinx” in communications.
Another Scott
@Kay: Yup. Normal people have to go to work on a Tuesday. Of course there aren’t going to be zillions of people there.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
“Let’s go to this Ohio diner and find out what the typical customer thinks about the recent elections in Finland. Hi sir, what’s your name and age and what do you think? I’m Frank and I’m 82 and I’ve been coming here for 20 years to have breakfast with my buddies who all got laid off from The Plant at the same time. I think that …”
Easy reporting is not accurate. Film at 11.
Cheers,
Scott.
UncleEbeneezer
@Almost Retired: I’m guessing the FL GOP learned the lesson from CA that demonizing the Latino/a/x population would lose them too many voters, so they just keep punching down on Black People, Women, and Transgender People.
Baud
@Geminid:
How about Hispanix?
I wish someone would name names and tell is which Dems they are talking about. Otherwise, it’s basically wailing against phantom Dems.
Bugboy
@WereBear: Mosquito control is prone to that thing the RBG quote-for-the-ages addressed when she wrote “throwing your umbrella away in a rainstorm, because you aren’t getting wet”: funding gets cut during years of low disease threat, as if control efforts have no preventative effects…
Old School
@Baud: John Leguizamo used “Latinx” on The Daily Show last week.
How dare he.
Another Scott
The Florida voting system is stacked against Democrats, and is being increasingly made more difficult.
Michael Waldman at BrennanCenter.org (from February 2023):
We need renewed national voting rights standards. That means voting the monsters out and voting sensible people in.
Gotta keep pushing that boulder up the hill. It’s the only way forward.
Cheers,
Scott.
Almost Retired
@UncleEbeneezer: Yep, Prop 187 was the beginning of the end for the California Republican party, with it’s loathsome “Save our State” trope.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: The Marsha’s Plate podcasters were talking the other day about how little things like cisgender people using inclusive language that doesn’t erase Trans and Non-Binary people, is actually really important to them (the hosts of the podcast who are Trans/Non-Binary people) because it helps them figure out who is really on their side. Who they can trust. Who are their allies.
Being mad at people who make that affirmative choice to be inclusive (which does no harm to the Cisgender people in that community at all) and even using it as a reason to vote for politicians who are openly pushing Trans Genocide, is extremely fucked up. It’s every bit as fucked up as saying you support DeSantis because someone used the pronouns that correctly align with someone’s gender identity. Using the term “Latinx” is a choice (some people do, some people don’t, nobody is forced to do so) and it literally hurts no one. I will always suspect there’s some Transphobia and misguided devotion to the Gender Binary at the heart of anyone who claims that it is some horrible outrage or disrespect to their culture. I’m glad politicians and health orgs like Planned Parenthood use “Latinx” because Trans/NB people in that community exist and they matter, even if they are only a tiny % of the population.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: “Dems are ramming ‘Latinx’ down everyone’s throats,” is the new version of “Dems are trying to ‘Defund the Police.'” It’s another way to blame GOP success on (wholly imagined) Progressivism Gone Too Far!!
I can definitely think of Dems who use “Latinx” because (newsflash) they want to be inclusive and appeal to voters who care about Transgender/NB people. They certainly aren’t running around demanding that everyone else use the term or calling anyone who doesn’t a horrible person.
It’s just another myth of the “all-powerful Dem Party trying to force us all to gay marry” cited by people as a reason for why they have no choice but to elect Nazis.
UncleEbeneezer
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
I go back and forth between Florida being a Red State and it being a Voter Suppressed State.
You can’t tell me that disenfranchising 1.7 MILLION people doesn’t make a difference.
They don’t all have to be Democrats. But, a sizeable portion of them would be Democrats.
Geminid
@Baud: Bendixen was not trying to single out people and argue with them, like an op-ed writer might. His intent was preventative. But some of the more liberal Democrats used Latinx for a while. One was Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, but a couple months ago I saw she’d switched to “Latine.”
I’ve used Hispanic since I saw the poll. It’s gender neutral. I read from one source that some social justice activists rejected “Hispanic” because it smacked of Colonialism. I don’t know if that’s true, but I don’t
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I don’t think Bendixen was mad at people who used Latinx. The only people he worried about the term hurting were the Democratic politicians who might want to use it. He was speaking to that context, and probably wasn’t talking about other situations.
apocalipstick
@ARoomWithAMoose:
So, you’ve met my brother-in-law?
AWOL
@Almost Retired: Many Puerto Ricans identify as white, identify with militarism and misogyny, and many have racist attitudes, especially toward the Black ex-slave population that resides near Vieques.
apocalipstick
@catclub: My BiL retired to FL. He couldn’t care less about schools or libraries, and his five-minute-walk-from-the-beach neighborhood will never flood.
Anonymous At Work
@WereBear: Yes, they tend to be flat and straight because what’s the alternative? The highest point in Florida is all of 345 feet above sea level. I’m not sure that Disney World doesn’t have rollercoasters that reach higher.
And Florida Man, bitter at being rejected from Daytona racing, typically passes other cars ON THE RIGHT, going around 100+ mph in traffic, while Canadian Snowbirds drive like the speed limit is in Kilometers per hour (i.e. half speed) and retirees are still unused to the new versions of Model Ts.
So, if you have a Florida’s driver license, which of the three are you and does that make anyone feel safe around you? Existential horror is the best type of horror.
Princess
@Geminid: I’m sure you’re right about why Hispanic is disfavoured by some but it’s ridiculous because Latin/whatever is hardly an indigenous term! I guess Hispanic doesn’t apply to Brazilians though.
kalakal
@Anonymous At Work:
This is so very true
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: That was a badass right there!
Paul in KY
@JPL: Those are some stupid beliefs.
Paul in KY
@Anonymous At Work: I lived in the Miami area for 3 years and the combination of snowbirds, local macho drivers & one-time tourists made for some interesting driving experiences.
Paul in KY
@Princess: Histuguese doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.