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Florida as a preliminary decision?
Cheering Cubans in exile in Miami
Photo: MARCO BELLO / REUTERS
Laura Vianello braces herself into the wind on the sidewalk in front of the Versailles restaurant.
She wears dark glasses and a gold cross around her neck and waves a huge flag with Donald Trump's likeness.
"Trump will make America great again," calls Vianello, 74, honking the cars driving by.
"We were doing so well before China let the coronavirus loose on us and we will be fine soon."
The "Versailles" in Little Havana, the Cuban quarter of Miami, has been
the
meeting place for exiles
for almost 50 years
when they want to celebrate, mourn or chat about politics over a cafecito.
On Calle Ocho, as Eighth Street is called here, they cheered Fidel Castro's death and the Miami Heat basketball victories.
And here they are now also cheering Donald Trump.
Dozens came on election night, shouting and singing, playing deafening salsa music.
Because they hope - and finally know when it is well after midnight that Trump has won again in Florida.
Mainly thanks to their help.
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Until the last vote: polling station in St. Petersburg, Florida
Photo: Scott Keeler / imago images / ZUMA Wire
Florida, tip on the scales, mother of all so-called swing states: Trump and Joe Biden had last been head to head here in the polls.
The close race in the southern state had given the Democrats hope that this election night would end quickly.
But then the result was surprisingly clear.
Trump secured those 29 votes in the electoral body relatively early in the evening and with a clear lead, without which he cannot remain president.
Because of this, too, it could take a long time before a nationwide result is established.
It all depends on the North and the Midwest again, where the number will be counted well into the next few days.
The Florida Democrats had been so optimistic.
Why were they so wrong, what went wrong in the Sunshine State?
One reason for this can be found in Little Havana.
Political minds always boil up here, maybe a question of temperament.
The oldest generation of Cubans in exile, those who were born on the Caribbean island, traditionally tend towards the Republicans, full of anger and sadness over the unforgotten trauma of communism from which they once escaped.
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"Bye, Don": Premature Democrats joy in Miami
Photo: MARCO BELLO / REUTERS
Like Laura Vianello.
She came to the USA in 1960, she was 14 years old at the time.
A year later, her uncle was shot down in his fighter jet during the unsuccessful US invasion of the Bay of Pigs.
"Captain Raul Vianello" is what she still calls him - and begins to cry when she tells of his fate.
"His parachute didn't open," she says.
Vianello blames then US President John F. Kennedy for the death of her uncle - and takes the Democrats, to which Kennedy belonged, into party custody to this day.
"All my life I had to listen to Raul's story of suffering! And it's your fault!"
The younger Cuban Americans born in the USA, on the other hand, have a more relaxed relationship with Castro's regime, which they often only know from family stories.
Many of them are more liberal than their parents.
Unfortunately, the Democrats missed this demographic advantage by neglecting the Cuban exile as a constituency for far too long.
They took the voices of the Cubans in exile for granted, and that has now taken its revenge.
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House of Cards: Palm Beach vote count
Photo: JOE SKIPPER / REUTERS
"You only knock every four years if you need me," said Cedric McMinn, vice president of the Biden election team in Florida, quoting a disgruntled Latino voter.
"Where are you the rest of the time?"
Apparently not there.
A catastrophic strategic mistake that even ex-President Barack Obama could not fix when he returned to Miami on Saturday.
According to initial analyzes, Biden was able to increase the number of seniors and whites, two other important groups of voters in Florida.
But not enough to make up for Trump's hard-earned head start with Latinos and African Americans.
This was reflected in a significant loss of votes in the metropolitan district of Miami-Dade, where the president wrested important percentage points from his rival and Biden was therefore behind
fell short of Hillary Clinton's 2016 result.
Trump had demonstratively ensnared the Latinos, including with numerous visits, discussions and Spanish-language TV commercials.
In those he branded Biden as a socialist who would turn the US into a new Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua.
As absurd as it may be, some of it probably stuck to it.
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Trump's best friends: Cubans in exile in Little Havana
Photo: MARCO BELLO / REUTERS
"Don't people understand that Trump is the one who looks most like a dictator like Castro?"
asks the democrat Annette Collazo, aghast, late in the election evening.
The former teacher, whose parents came from Cuba, ran for the state parliament of Florida.
Your constituency, Hialeah, has the highest percentage of Cuban exiles in the entire United States.
Often, as Collazo reports, the door was slammed in her face on her tours.
She lost the election by 40 to 60 percent - to a Republican exile son.
The analyzes are sure to reveal other, more delicate voter movements, especially in the southwest, north and central Florida.
One thing is certain: Joe Biden still has a chance without the Sunshine State - but for Trump this victory is the best preliminary result he could expect this night.
The crowd cheering for the president in Little Havana, in front of the "Versailles", had already doubled in the late evening.
Icon: The mirror