[reducesuffering]

While Florida was/is a swing state in US elections, whoever secures the ex-Cuban vote wins a massive amount of electoral votes. Republicans are fine jockeying against Cuba "because communism", and so the Democrats are in a pickle in that the right thing to do would be to improve relations with Cuba but it guarantees to hand Florida over to the Republicans who will then have the presidency and proceed to treat Cuba as-is.

If Florida remains reliably Republican anyway, it's possible the Democrats may get enough electoral support from the rest of the country to still win future presidencies and ease up on Cuba without caring about the Florida ex-Cuban vote.

[topkai22]

Yeah, this is basically the answer- Cuban American lobby is solidly against the current regime. Less so than they used to be, but there are still plenty of voices strongly opposed to normalization and few strongly for it.

Without a strong counter vailing lobby there is little reason for politicians to risk alienating the Cuban bloc to normalize relations with a fairly repressive government that still remains broadly anti-American and opposed to US interests.

[1123581321]

Cubans who emigrate vote relatively conservatively, so perhaps it’s in the interest of the Democratic Party to make it more attractive to stay if most existing anti-Cuba Floridians are not marginal/swing voters.