Protests in Cuba against the communist regime and the decades of oppression it has produced have provided a test of will in Florida. While Republicans, both in the state and nationally, are always outspoken against the Cuban government and understand the reasons the people there are fed up, Democrats have attempted to straddle a line that can’t be straddled.

Tepid denouncements that refuse to name communism as the problem and distract to other issues do not play well in a state like Florida. We saw the White House try to make the unrest about COVID vaccines, which is not only ludicrous but an obvious attempt to bolster their own flailing messaging on the pandemic. Meanwhile, local other Democrats appropriated the justified protests against a dictatorship in Cuba in order to whine about anti-rioting laws in Florida.

As those on the left used to love to say until Republicans started pointing it out to the cries of racism, demographics is destiny, and in this case, the demographics of Florida hate lukewarm cowardice when it comes to the plight of the Cuban people.

That has Democrats panicking, realizing they’ve screwed up.

Democrats are worried they'll hurt themselves in Florida — and more broadly in the midterms — if they mishandle the situation in Cuba. https://t.co/UOkKYqGPOt

— Axios (@axios) July 13, 2021

The problem is that they’ve already mishandled it. Democrats can’t take back their initial reactions. They can’t take back the ridiculous comparisons to not being able to burn down Target stores in Miami. They certainly can’t take back their years of fluffing the Cuban regime and attempting to normalize it, from Barack Obama going down there to watch baseball to Joe Biden pretending the only problem is the embargo.

This isn’t California we are talking about in regards to voter dynamics. The Latino populations in Florida are shifting heavily right-ward, with Democrats seeing shocking vote share losses in even normally dark blue areas like Miami-Dade County. Things are changing, and while national Democrats try to appease far-left ideologues in New York, they are ceding one of the most important battleground states before the fight even really gets started.

Democrats have a communism problem, whether we are talking about Cuba or their knee-bending toward China. While their most radical members claim it just hasn’t been done right yet, their more seasoned ones are desperately trying to find a middle ground that doesn’t exist. The result is predictable.

The Democrat coalition is not sustainable. They’ve previously cobbled together various identity groups, many of which have ideological positions in opposition with each other. That house of cards is coming down, and Florida is just the first example of what I think will be a wider collapse by 2022.