The Florida Democratic Party is going through it’s usual even year, mid-November hand-wringing and once again instead of taking a deep breathe and assessing the situation from a longer-term perspective, we have the usual band-aid solutions.

Here are some quick thoughts on this:

• Every time Democrats have been beaten badly or their has been internal dissent and quickly changed Chairs (2002, 2012 and 2020), the next cycle has actually gone as badly if not worse for the party.
• Hillsborough and Miami-Dade Counties are now arguably the most GOP-friendly large urban counties in the entire country. How this happened is because Democrats in Florida, unlike other states have fundamentally misread the electorate in suburban areas. The bleed is not just about Hispanics as has been represented. but people of all races and economic status.
• Democrats at the state level, complete abandonment of medium-sized counties and the failure of local DEC’s to properly organize precinct-by-precinct in these counties has led them to look more like rural counties in 2022 than urban counties, as they did in 2012. It’s not that the places have changed culturally, it’s that the Democrats have disengaged.
• Palm Beach County which flipped in this election cycle, has become a county where Democrats have become chaotic, decentralized and focused on besting one another in primaries. Democrats in the county are more and more dependent on money from polluters, FPL and big business making them distant from the increasing white-working class electorate in the county.
• Democrats have basically lost Pinellas County despite having better candidate quality there than in other parts of the state.
• Broward County is very much now in the GOP’s sights. We’re seeing bleed in the county not only among Latino’s, but among Haitian-Americans and Jamaican-Americans also. I would expect Broward to trend further toward the GOP in future cycles at this rate. Much like Palm Beach, as Jewish-Americans become a smaller % of the general electorate, the area becomes more GOP-friendly. Basically every other demographic group in Broward and Palm Beach outside African-Americans (note I said African-American, not “black”) and Jewish-Americans are now trending heavily toward the GOP.
• In Orange County, the Democrats failure to embrace populist economic messaging is turning off progressives who besides being highly-motivated to support Anna Eskamani, are increasingly feeling distant from the Democratic Party. Many Democrats felt no need to campaign on rent stabilization in the county and statewide, despite it having overwhelming support among people of all demographic groups and party affiliations.
• Democrats have blown Duval County through disorganization and pointless in-fighting. With Jacksonville City Council elections around the corner, further blowing up the state party may not be smart until after these elections are done. It is critical Democrats do well in March in Duval.

All of this is to say, I think Democrats need to assess everything I have written above and more and process it before rushing into rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic once more.