Eileen Higgins’s win has reset the city’s political landscape in some ways not seen in 28 years, and in others not at all

Miami’s new mayor, Eileen Higgins, hailed it as “a new day” for the city after the Democrat ended three decades of Republican rule on Tuesday night in a stunning election triumph.

In reality, the result is more of a seismic shifting of sands given the magnitude of her victory over the Donald Trump-backed Republican candidate, Emilio González, in the most populous city in Miami-Dade county, which the president won in 2024 by 12%.

Higgins won the run-off with almost 60% of the vote, according to preliminary results reported Wednesday by the Miami Herald. More than just further evidence of a growing national backlash against Trump’s policies on the national stage, particularly immigration, her win has reset Miami’s political landscape in a manner not seen in some ways in 28 years, and in others not at all.

  • plyth@feddit.org
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    6 hours ago

    After all those years upholding the embargo on Cuba it finally pays off.

    • BanMe@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      If we educate people on why progressive ideals are good for them (and mostly, their wallets), then yes in time. If we just assume Joe Everyman is spontaneously going to take up socialism as a hobby when everything else is telling them it’s terrible, then no.

          • zbyte64@awful.systems
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            6 hours ago

            He won because Trump failed to steal the election after a once in a century pandemic. That’s who he was running against. Then after 4 years we all got secondary amnesia from watching Biden.

            • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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              6 hours ago

              He still got the most votes of any president ever. He got double the votes of Bernie in the primary.

              The people want neolib bullshit. It’s stupid of them to want, but it is what they want. We gotta change their minds on a massive scale before we can expect them to change so drastically.

          • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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            8 hours ago

            He also got pathetic votes. If he had a progressive against him (at the televized debates, on all ballots), he would have lost by a landslide

                • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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                  7 hours ago

                  I think you overestimate the class consciousness of the average American voter. Biden didn’t get “pathetic votes”, he got the most votes of any president ever. Even just proportionately, all the presidents in the last century with a clear majority win have been neolib types.

                  People don’t want to eat the rich, people wanna eat hamburgers and play video games. You and your little online message board friends (myself included) want to eat the rich, and if you spend all your time here you might fool yourself into thinking the average American has a somewhat elevated class consciousness. They do not.

                  My work brings me in contact with all sorts of people across all strata of life. The average person just kinda muddles through life, they don’t really spend any particular length of time thinking about anything really, whatever their favorite diversion is perhaps (games, sports, TV, movies, etc.).

                  I personally talked to a surprising number of people who, after the election, thought Biden was the candidate in 2024. People genuinely just do not care. They have basically no media literacy, no knowledge of current events, no general practice of critical thinking.

                  We’re not gonna get a progressive president before the general class consciousness shifts significantly. What we can get is an FDR type who will at least talk to the progressives at the table, and then get progressive to the table.

                  Slow and steady, comrade snail.

  • smeg@infosec.pub
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    1 day ago

    It is Trump backlash. It will last a cycle or two, in which Democrats will pass some small policies that slightly soften the edges of our modern dystopia, and then Republicans will come back to power and continue the march into misery for the masses.

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    Red states are redrawing their districts based on 2024 margins. This may bite them in the ass, especially in Texas, if they expect their massive gains with Latinos to hold after the ICE horror show and terrible economy. All of their new R+8 gerrymandered districts might not be as safe as they thought in a D+10 midterm.

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        That’s pretty messed up, but according to the article they only sent that letter out to a couple thousand people, which is not many in a state that size. It’s going to be hard for them to mess with voting eligibility on a large scale. Even stuff like this (which could be illegal), where they make some people jump through extra hoops to be able to vote, could end up depressing more Republican votes than Democratic ones. The big political realignment of the past 10 years has be largely along education lines - those with 4-year degrees or more sorting to Democrats, and those with less education sorting to Republicans. This flips the old system (poor Dems/rich Republicans) on its head. Things like voter ID laws, which are intended to inconvenience and depress the vote of people who don’t have their shit together, aren’t going to disproportionately hurt Democrats the way they used to, and could in fact have the reverse effect.

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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          17 hours ago

          They are losing in some places by the hundreds and we don’t know what the real number is. They lie a lot. They are not afraid of cheating and have done so in the past.

          • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
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            6 hours ago

            FALSE! Lying is AGAINST the Bible so Republicans, aka Christian Nationalists, CANT Lie! OTHERWISE they would Need to be Put to DEATH!

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          Remember there’s also the Republican ownership of voting machine companies, the Republican replacement of state officials who oversee elections, and the Republican demand that their DoJ “comprehensively” oversee elections in states (whereas in 2024 they argued the opposite, that the DoJ should have no access to monitor elections). They have a number of tricks up their sleeves.

          • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zip
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            7 hours ago

            We must vote for Democrats in large numbers, make it too big to rig. The more people who vote Democrat the harder it will be to rig the election.

    • hanrahan@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      This may bite them in the ass, especially in Texas,

      Or not, an example Ted Ceuz is the most reviled poltican in Texas and keeps being reelected.

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        Texas is still a red state, so statewide races like Ted’s US Senate seat are a stretch. Though Beto amazingly got within 2 points in 2018!

        • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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          You would expect to see action in the primary, he only got elected because he was in a small turnout special election.

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    1 day ago

    I don’t want Democratic wins. I want non-neoliberal wins to pass legislation that will stop capitulating to capitalists.

    • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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      At the current state of things I’ll take a step back from the cliff rather than a step off.

      Arguably we are off the cliff and you want to argue if the hand of the person pulling you back up meets your moral tests. If they don’t you demand they release you so you can continue to fall while you wait for your ideal savior. Hopefully they reach you before you reach the bottom

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        You are assuming that the hand is actually pulling you up. That’s a mistake.

        That strategy has been the predominant one for the Democratic Party since the 1990s. How has the country been doing since then?

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          If my options were to be dropped off a cliff or dangled over the edge, dangling is preferable.

          I’d obviously prefer the person that will lift me up, but if they’re not there

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            1 day ago

            It’s up to us to push our representatives to show results beyond the “not Trump”.

            When the Democrats used to wield power for the working class they had full control of the country for decades.

            • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              You’re right there. I won’t reject a victory over republicans, but I do want better

              • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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                1 day ago

                I think I’m just tired of the Democratic Party always having just enough centrists to take the blame for their inaction. John Fetterman, Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer, Kory Booker and more like them will always screw over the working class to appease the wealthy capitalists.

    • 474D@lemmy.world
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      Rome wasn’t built in a day. Every vote away from the far right is a better chance at creating a true progressive shift. I wish it could happen that fast but it won’t. We need to take what is realistic now and NOT STOP PUSHING. This is a huge undertaking for these areas

      • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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        My point is that electing Democrats is not enough. We cannot afford to elect centrists to continue to kneecap any and all legislation to the point that it is ineffective. It only proves the GOP talking point that government is ineffective.

        Centrists only exist to appeal to the right and blame the left. Centrists 100% expect the full support of every leftist while they will do nothing to benefit them.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      You’re getting downvoted but I agree. Neoliberals will do nothing but say slightly meaner words to Trump as he kidnaps their constituents.

    • jimmy90@lemmy.world
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      it’s people like you that got trump elected

      congratulations

      haven’t you worked out politics yet?

      • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Really?

        It wasn’t the ineffective neoliberal policies that have done nothing to improve to lives of Americans?

        What isn’t surprising is that centrist will blame everything on the people to their left.

        Ask Hillary Clinton why she lost. It wasn’t her “I will attract suburban Republicans and I will do nothing else” campaign. It was the Bernie supporters.

        Ask Kamala Harris why she lost. It wasn’t her “I will attract suburban Republicans and I will do nothing else” campaign. It was the leftists pointing out her support of genocide and neoliberalism.

        Centrists are shameless liars that have no ability to look in the mirror.