Will Obama’s Cuba Policy Lose Florida for Clinton?

Exiles who oppose normalization could give Trump the state’s 29 electoral votes.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in a statistical dead heat in Florida, where the state’s 29 electoral votes will be pivotal in Tuesday’s presidential election. One surprise for Democrats is that President Obama’s December 2014 decision to liberalize U.S. Cuba policy is not helping their nominee as the White House expected it to. Instead, it has become a liability.

Mr. Obama and Democrats bet big on the hypothesis that the traditional hard-line approach to dealing with the Castro regime, which encouraged the Cuban diaspora of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, is passe. And that new generations of Cuban-Americans, either U.S. born or more-recently arrived, favor economic and political engagement with the regime.

By spinning the president’s more-liberal travel policy to the island as an opportunity for investors to get in on the ground floor of Cuban change, the administration also hoped to gin up enthusiasm in Miami for his kinder, gentler attitude toward the communist military dictatorship. Mr. Obama’s detente with Cuba was supposed to be a political winner.

Just 23 months later that theory is being tested.

Cuban-Americans who initially supported Mr. Obama’s outreach are increasingly disillusioned with an administration strategy that helps the Castros but leaves out the Cuban people. This could affect turnout among left-of-center voters who care about human rights.

The Obama policy also seems to be energizing greater numbers of conservative and independent Cuban-Americans to rally behind the Republican candidate. A New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll released on Oct. 30 had the New York real-estate developer leading Mrs. Clinton 52% to 42% among Cuban-Americans. Some read this as a result of recent Trump efforts in south Florida to make himself a champion of Cuban exiles. But it is more likely a rise in the protest vote.

The U.S. trade embargo, which dates to 1962, was codified into U.S. law in 1996. Lifting it requires congressional approval. But Mr. Obama has normalized relations with Havana, a step aimed at lending legitimacy to the gangster government. He also has used an executive order to liberalize U.S. travel to Cuba and has licensed some U.S. hotels to operate on the island.

The administration’s public explanation for the change was that economic engagement with Cuba would hasten the fall of the dictatorship.

A less charitable reading of Mr. Obama’s motivations suggests that he harbors ideological sympathy for the Cuban Revolution and believes that the Castros would treat Cubans humanely if only the U.S. would demonstrate tolerance for tropical totalitarianism.

Regardless of which narrative you prefer, the president badly miscalculated. Even his supporters have noticed.

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