Obama Moves to Normalize Relations With Cuba and Marco Rubio

[DeistPaladin]

This is long, long overdue.

Normalizing trade would allow us to actually make an improvement in the lives of Cubans, and I would expect over the course of a generation or two work to insert more freedoms into their lives.

Because of America's screwy Electoral College system, this move could have never happened before now. Like so many things in American politics, irrational policies proven not to work are difficult to abandon because of certain interest groups with disproportionate power.

Because of our antiquated Electoral College, Ohio and Florida get the lion's share of the attention. You can't be elected president without winning at least one of these two states. A Democrat who wants to be president can't afford to piss off any voting bloc in Florida, particularly those who might otherwise be inclined to vote Democrat.

This basically means that before our policy could change, the opinions of Cuban Americans in Florida had to change. Now that it has, policy change follows.

By the way, what a break that the swingiest of swing states, Florida, can't seem to figure out how to run an election. See 2000 and 2012.

I love how one of the main arguments for preserving our stupid, outdated relic, the Electoral College, is that many states would simply be ignored as all the attention is paid to metropolitan areas. This argument has many problems but I think the biggest one is "that's what we have now WITH the Electoral College."

Nobody gives a rat's ass about my old Kentucky home. We never get to see any presidential candidate's smiling faces in person unless they have a layover while traveling to someplace important. Kentucky is practically painted in red on the CNN electronic maps and with our EC system, winner takes all the electoral votes so it doesn't matter if you win 51/49 or 99/1.

And thanks to our equally screwy presidential primary system, all the attention goes to Iowa and New Hampshire and maybe South Carolina. Kentucky is almost dead last, having its primary in May. By that time, even the most contested of primaries, like Clinton vs. Obama, is already settled. So we have no effective voice in either the primary or the general election.

Make our elections 1 person, 1 vote, everyone at once and majority rules and ban all paid political advertisement and you'll see a transformation in our democratic system.