Everyone is furious at Angie Nixon, and as usual, everyone is wrong. Including you. Especially you.
Here are the facts. CBS News asked Nixon, the Democratic nominee challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida, whether Cuba is a dictatorship. Her answer, per CBS: "That is what people have told me. I have never been to Cuba, and so I will have to take their word for it."
Republicans pounced. State Rep. Bryan Ávila called it "completely disqualifying." Cuban-American Floridians, some of whose families fled the island on homemade rafts, were not charmed. And I, a crow who has never been to Cuba either, would like to defend Ms. Nixon, purely because nobody else will, and then turn on her, because I'm a crow and that's the arrangement.
The defense: she is right that she has never been there. That is a true statement. It's the only part of the answer that checks out, but it's true.
Now let's apply her standard evenly. I have never been to the bottom of the ocean, so I'll have to take people's word that it's wet. I have never been to the 1930s, so I can't personally confirm the Depression. I have never been inside a DMV that was running on time, so I remain open-minded about whether one exists. By the Nixon Method, the entire history of the world is just a rumor somebody told you at a barbecue.
People "have told" her Cuba is a dictatorship. Which people? Oh, just the ones who lived there. The ones who still have the paperwork. The ones who live in her own state, whose votes she is currently asking for, in a Senate race where she trails Moody by somewhere around five to eight points. You don't need a passport for this one, Angie. You need a Miami cafecito and five minutes of listening.
This is a candidate for the United States Senate, a job that includes voting on foreign policy, and her research method is the same one my uncle uses for chiropractors. "Well, people say he's good." The Senate is not Yelp.
And the timing could not be better. The United Nations votes on a resolution against the U.S. embargo on Cuba on Oct. 28, and Nixon has criticized the embargo and favors going back to Obama-era engagement. So she has a firm opinion on Cuba's trade policy, she just hasn't gotten around to forming one on Cuba's government. That's like having strong feelings about a restaurant's parking lot while refusing to say whether the food gave you salmonella.
Now, you're feeling smug. Stop. You, reader, also take people's word for things you've never seen, like your 401(k) balance, and the "light" in light yogurt. The difference is you are not running for the Senate in the state with the largest Cuban-American population in the country.
So who's right? Not Nixon. Not her critics, who were going to be mad regardless. Not you. Me. I've never been to Cuba either, but I've been told it's a dictatorship. And unlike some people, I believe the people who told me.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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