In Florida's kaleidoscopic politics, a window into America's future
Yvette Batlle opens the door a crack and greets the young woman and man standing on her front step, clipboards in hand. Her initial suspicion melts into a smile.
For Hannah Klein and William Joel Bravo, paid canvassers for the liberal NextGen America, that’s half the challenge – getting people to open the door and engage.
Ms. Batlle is registered to vote, maybe as a Democrat – she’s not sure – and still hasn’t researched the candidates. But she’s certain of her No. 1 issue: health care. And she knows what she thinks of the president.
“I believe that as a woman, it is my moral obligation to vote for anyone but Donald Trump,” says Batlle, a Cuban-American native of Miami who works as a paralegal.
President Trump isn’t literally on the ballot Nov. 6, but really, he is. Mr. Trump himself says so.
More broadly, so many of the threads running through our nation’s politics seem woven right into the fabric of Florida today: From a marquee governor’s race that features a Trump-like Republican versus a progressive African-American Democrat, to the growing significance of the Hispanic vote, to the issue of guns in the wake of mass shootings, to the burgeoning activism of young people in a state that is growing more youthful but where retirees are far more reliable voters. The Sunshine State, the nation’s biggest political battleground, is once again a kind of microcosm of the United States.
The outcome here could tip control of Congress – with a Democratic Senate seat and as many as seven Republican-held House seats hanging in the balance – and has enormous implications for the next presidential race.
When hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, political attack ads kept running at first –
A ‘woke’ Obama 2.0?Where Miami meets VenezuelaEnter Tom SteyerDoor to door, student to studentThe young and the independentSid Dinerstein, what’s your prediction?