Without free and open elections a government leader is not legitimate.

[Skinner]

You can talk all you want about Cuba's record on literacy and health care. But there is no ignoring the fact that the Cuban people do not have any legitimate mechanism to peacefully select those who rule them.

You might think Fidel was swell, but there is no legitimate way of knowing whether the Cuban people thought so. Because Fidel never had the guts -- or the respect for his own people -- to stand for free, fair and open elections.

Yes, I know what the Cuba-apologists are going to say. You are going to claim that the sham one-party elections in Cuba where candidates must get approval from the government to run unopposed are more democratic than the American system because electoral college, campaign contributions, hacked voting machines, Trump, imperialist Yankee propaganda. And I don't doubt you believe it. But that doesn't make it true.

Elections. There is no substitute.

[hrmjustin]

1. I hope he enjoys his time in hell!

[PoliticAverse]

2. And if the people in an area don't have the right to freely emigrate from that area....

it isn't a country it's a prison camp.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. That is why I have so much respect for Daniel Ortega

At the urging of Jimmy Carter who monitored the election Daniel Ortega, a Marxist who would become a democratic socialist, relinquished power when he was defeated by Violeta Chamorro.

In the fullness of time he became president.


I just can't get all excited lambasting Castro for being a tyrant when we just elected one. Let's hope he is constrained by the Constitution.


I will add Castro cared about his people, albeit he believed he and he alone knew what was best for them. Donald Trump only cares about Donald Trump.

[Ken Burch]

9. Absolutely.

n/t.

[bullwinkle428]

25. Nuanced views are all too often in short supply, even at DU.

I always appreciate reading them.

[awoke_in_2003]

43. Excellent post. nt

[Punkingal]

4. You are absolutely right!

There is no substitute for a free and fair election. It doesn't matter what you get if your freedom to choose is taken away.

And I would say many were not happy with him. Why would they risk their lives to escape otherwise?

[Ligyron]

10. They escaped for the reason some are saying we lost the election

economic opportunities.

[PatSeg]

15. I've known people who

escaped from Cuba. The impression I got was that it was very brutal under Castro.

[jberryhill]

5. "And, then I told him...

"...Pull my other leg, it's got bells on it!"



You forgot to add, "...unless they have something we want."

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Here's something I just posted about Cuba's other revolutionaries ... who gave their lives ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028306650

[roamer65]

7. Hopefully with him gone and his brother stepping down in 2018...

it will usher in a new period of better relations with Cuba.

[Maeve]

8. A tyrant who 'means well' is still a tyrant

And while it is arguable that America's refusal to talk with him caused more problems for the Cuban people rather than less, he was still a dictator and used his position to rule rather than to serve.

[moondust]

11. Benevolent dictators can be attractive.

But you never know how long they'll last or how oppressive their replacements will be.

Democracy FTW.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. These recounts won't legtimize

not after the voter suppression and purges of the last 10 years

[mcar]

13. K&R

[kebob]

16. Right On!

[DAngelo136]

17. So let me pose this question

Are there free and fair elections in this country?

You wrote: "You might think Fidel was swell, but there is no legitimate way of knowing whether the Cuban people thought so. Because Fidel never had the guts -- or the respect for his own people -- to stand for free, fair and open elections."

I reply with this:
" Trump will assume the presidency because of the Electoral College’s influence — nearly a million more people cast ballots for Hillary Clinton as of November 15. The election was also marked by low turnout, with tens of millions of eligible voters choosing not to participate at all. Yet there has been relatively little discussion about the millions of people who were eligible to vote but could not do so because they faced an array of newly-enacted barriers to the ballot box.
Their systematic disenfranchisement was intentional and politically motivated. In the years leading up to 2016, Republican governors and state legislatures implemented new laws restricting when, where, and how people could vote — laws that disproportionately harmed students, the poor, and people of color. In several instances, lawmakers pushing such policies said explicitly that their goal was suppression of voters who favor the Democratic Party.
Three such states serve as case studies for the effectiveness of these voting restrictions: Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida."

https://thinkprogress.org/2016-a-case-study-in-voter-suppression-258b5f90ddcd#.6pls3emqr

And can you tell me why this country still institutes the Electoral College? Is THAT your example of democracy?
I think you should put that stone down before you break your glass house.

Oh, and one more thing: Compare and contrast the two governments of Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista, if you dare.

[MADem]

20. Batista was worse? That's your argument? LOL!

We have an electoral college because it's enshrined in our system by the founding fathers. It served a purpose in America's agrarian heyday, but nowadays it's a pointless vestige.

It wasn't inherently evil or pointless, it just isn't working for us anymore.

http://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3205&gclid=COK6-rv6xtACFVdMDQodJ-ULvQ

[SickOfTheOnePct]

23. Well said n/t

[sarisataka]

26. Do not assume for an election to be free and fair

it must take place in a democracy.

Many people have the mistaken notion that the U.S. is a democracy. At the Federal level we are a republic, not a democracy. The difference is important. It means we can have anomalies where a person can win the overall popular vote yet loose the election due to the distribution of elected representatives.

Similar situations can occur in a Parliamentary system where the head of government may come from a party other than the one with the most representatives. A coalition of minority parties could theoretically usurp the power of a majority party with 49% of the members of Parliament.

It either case, the elections may be "free and fair" but not reflect the choice of the plurality of the people. We can whine about the Electoral college and popular vote but Hillary only received ~48% of cast ballots and that only represents ~20% of the total eligible voters.

Our elections are free and fair- until tampering is proven. Engagement of the voters is a very different issue and we have a mechanism to eliminate the Electoral system if we believe it has become obsolete.

Compare and contrast the two governments of Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista, if you dare.

Castro was better than Batista, Mussolini was better than Hitler, Andropov was better than Stalin, what's your point?

[awoke_in_2003]

44. Here we go with the "we aren't a democracy" BS

There are two types of democracies- direct and representative. In a direct democracy, each citizen votes on every decision. Not practical in large groups. In a representative democracy, one of which is a republic, the people elect representatives to vote in their stead. This used to be common knowledge, before education in the country was destroyed. In fact for decades we would crow about being the oldest democracy in the world. When did all this change? When talk radio and cable news took over. The same asshole who came up with the "we're not a democracy" argument (Rush Limbaugh) also came up with the argument that the Nazis were left wing because they had the word "socialist" in their name.

[sarisataka]

45. Most accurately we have

a democratic republic.

According to Webster's:

Is the United States a democracy or a republic?
One of the most commonly encountered questions about the word democracy has nothing to do with its spelling or pronunciation, and isn’t even directly related to the meaning of the word itself. That question is “is the United States a democracy or a republic?” The answer to this, as with so many other questions about meaning, may be phrased as some form of “it depends.”

Some people believe that a country calling itself a democracy must be engaged in direct (or pure) democracy, in which the people of a state or region vote directly for policies, rather than elect representatives who make choices on their behalf. People who follow this line of reasoning hold that the United States is more properly described as a republic, using the following definition of that word: ”a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.”

However, both democracy and republic have more than a single meaning, and one of the definitions we provide for democracy closely resembles the definition of republic given above: “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

So if someone asks you if the United States is a democracy or a republic, you may safely answer the question with either “both” or “it depends.”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

That is why I qualified my answer to the Federal level. We may talk of one person, one vote but that does not equate to each vote having equal weight. It is true within a voting unit at the Representative and Senate but the "weight" of each vote compared to other districts is unequal. A House member may represent a district of ~500,000 people or nearly a million.

As we are seeing in the Presidential election process, it is more like our votes are a 'suggestion'. In many cases Electors are free to ignore the votes of the people they represent without official consequences.

I don't know about Mr. Limbaugh but I learned about our system of government in elementary school, long before he was on radio or cable was even an idea.

[malaise]

34. Good post n/t

[heaven05]

18. our government now is legitimate

right? Okay, anything you say................

[MADem]

19. I know a lotta Cubanos.

And they're not down with the government at all. They say, pretty much exactly, what you are saying.

Many of my Cuban friends came to USA as children, teens and young adults, with parents who sold up everything and ran like hell. Not poverty stricken, but not landed gentry, either. These were the kids of teachers and office workers and the odd nurse. Their parents came to the mainland and took jobs in factories or as janitors/maids, scrubbing floors because their qualifications didn't translate and they didn't have language skills. Some went to PR and did better because they didn't have a language barrier--in fact, a lot of really super "successful" puertorriqueños (the Bacardí family , e.g.) were born in Havana!

The people I know don't have the same attitude as the people who lost their huge fincas or had their big fancy buildings (or distilleries) in Havana nationalized, because they didn't leave behind massive amounts of property. Their parents have made new lives, and they've adopted USA as their home. They aren't rabid about getting their "stuff" back (because they didn't have very much in the first place that they didn't liquidate) but they also don't believe the present government represents the people in any way, shape or form. The lack of true electoral representation does resonate. And, of course, they find the poverty and deprivation to the point of hunger unacceptable.

[panader0]

21. I thought this would be about Trump.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

22. Thanks once again

for just saying it like it is.

[tammywammy]

24. k&r

[Bad Dog]

27. They had free and fair elections in Chile

Right up until the point that Allende was overthrown by a CIA sponsored coup. President Morsi came to power in a free and fair election but he was not to the empire's tastes either. The free and fair elections in Honduras were thrown aside by another American coup.

We didn't have free and fair elections in Britain while we were fighting the Nazis, and ever since the revolution Cuba has been threatened by a huge imperial superpower.

Some countries don't have the luxury of free and fair elections, basic survival is more pressing.

[Uponthegears]

28. "Elections"

Last edited Sat Nov 26, 2016, 03:44 PM - Edit history (1)

I suspect the word was chosen carefully.

Our Founding Fathers most definitely did not place their faith in the word which could have been used, but was not . . . "democracy." The only governing body directly elected under the Constitution as originally drafted was the House of Representatives (a body which, not accidentally, has little power to independently check the power of the executive or the judiciary). The remaining bodies were all selected by the elites.

I mention this for a number of reasons. First, it shows that the Founding Fathers had a great deal of skepticism toward the notion that the people have the capacity to govern themselves. Second, it raises the question of whether a government chosen by one class of elites as was envisioned by our founders is intrinsically superior to an openly non-democratic one?

If the answer to that question is "no" or even "it's close," then the legitimacy of governments should be judged by how they exercise power, not by how they come to power.

Whether Castro should be remembered as a great leader or a poor one turns on what he did and what he failed to do, nothing else.

[Skinner]

30. Ok then. Why didn't Castro let the Cuban people render their judgement on his rule?

Seems to me if we are going to judge a ruler on what he did or failed to do, then it is only fair and appropriate to let all citizens participate in that judgment. Or should we substitute the judgement of random U.S.-based Internet forum posters for that of the Cuban people?

[Uponthegears]

32. No doubt a legitimate question

Obviously I can't speak to Castro's personal motivations, however one might suggest that democratic mechanisms have consistently failed to protect oppressed people, be they the poor or any other oppressed group.

Take, for example, LGBTQ rights. Left to the judgment of the majority, we would still be in the Dark Ages. Is there some reason to believe that the same would not hold true for the poor whom Castro championed?

[Adrahil]

36. That argument, however, fails at a basic level.

Substituting the judgement of a group of people with the judgement of one man is autocracy, no matter how you slice it.

If Castro was concerned, he could of authored a Constitution that protected the rights of oppressed peoples and placed a high bar for removing those protections. And then placed himself in the hands of the people.

And While I think you could argue that Castro saw himself, and many others saw him, as a champion of the poor, let us not forget the thousands of poor who risked (and sometimes suffered) death in order to LEAVE Cuba and come to the USA. Certainly, THOSE people did not see themselves as better off under the rule of a government in which they had no say.

I simply do not understand the American Left's love affair with autocrat who imprisoned political dissidents. Is it true that people are fine with autocracy, so long as they think it's the RIGHT autocrat? That's disturbing to me.

[Uponthegears]

39. "let us not forget"

"the thousands of poor who risked (and sometimes suffered) death in order to LEAVE Cuba"

Okay

As long as we do not forget the millions who stayed to help Cuba overcome an inhuman, politically-motivated, 50 year long embargo by the largest economy in the world.

[mythology]

47. Given how difficult it was to escape

And how poor the average Cuban is, you can't actually make a good argument that staying was indicative of a love of the Cuban government or a desire to fight the U.S. embargo.

[Uponthegears]

49. Well, I guess no more

than a Castro-basher can "make a good argument" that people who:

(a) leave an economy crippled by 50 years of embargo by the largest economy in their hemisphere, and second largest in the world;
(b) to come to a country where they get to bypass all immigration laws AND the ten year wait for citizenship;
(c) become automatic citizens in of that country, which, incidentally, is not crippled by an inhumane embargo; and
(d) and have a ready-made social support system waiting for them

are "fleeing" as opposed to "taking a bribe."

[lostnfound]

29. The US is responsible and should reflect on its own history and actions

Clean our own house first. Castro was tragic karma for Batista, and karma is messy and imprecise.

A moral compass. There is no substitute.

Profits over people has been the driving mandate of US foreign policy for. 150 years.

[Skinner]

31. Castro cannot be held responsible for his own actions because the United States is bad.

Sounds legit.

[lostnfound]

33. I did not say that!

Linear binary answer. Give me a little more credit than that.

God, is there something unamerican about asking ourselves "was there something we could have done better?"

[malaise]

35. Don''t you know America is never wrong

Exceptional and all that

[madokie]

37. We just went though an election cycle

that was hardly a model of Democracy ourselves

I worry for our young. Me, I'm dang near 69 and with the health issues I have it wasn't me I was voting for but rather it was for my one and only Grand child. Its her future that I worry about.

Fidel seemed to soften in his older age and for that I say good on him. Change is coming to the island slowly but surely. One day they'll have the government they want and that I also do believe


My apologies to whomever but this is how I feel, how I see it

[malaise]

38. You have every reason to worry for your grandchild

We all pretend our 'democratic model' is great - all farce most of the time - this time in America was really bad - and the same is true in several countries

[madokie]

40. I agree with you 100%

[Exilednight]

41. Then here's a question I have.

If they are not legitimate governments, then why do the US, including both parties and almost every nominee of every political stripe and every major figure of both major parties, including Obama, both Clintons, both Bushs, every Secretary of State, member of the Senate and House of Representatives recognize them as the legitimate government?

These are the kind of statements that makes our party look inept.

[Skinner]

42. Cuba only has one government so obviously that's the one that everyone else has to deal with.

But that does not mean that the government of Cuba rules with the consent of the Cuban people.

[RandiFan1290]

46. Pious hypocrites

With houses full of Chinese crap

[FarCenter]

48. Free and open elections are necessary but not sufficient for legitimacy

The "mandate of heaven" is only secured and maintained though the leader's proper conduct of his office.

Elections are just a mechanism for selecting a person to fill an office and gain legitimacy.