Alex Perez

On Tuesday, the Florida Senate passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, and Democrats lost their minds. The Florida left is in a bind these days. Governor Ron DeSantis is shaping the state in his image and Florida is all but guaranteed to go red for the foreseeable future. Yet their recent behavior is desperate even for them. Democrats are having trouble finding suitable candidates to run for statewide elections in 2022 — Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, for instance, isn’t seeking to reclaim her old seat — so it’s not a surprise that they’ve gone all in with the emotional scare tactics and sleight-of-hand rhetorical tricks that increasingly epitomize their party. The approach, however, is misfiring, only serving to prepare DeSantis for his inevitable 2024 presidential bid.

Nikki Fried, Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and Democratic candidate for the state’s governorship, recently compared Governor Ron DeSantis to Hitler. Fried’s deplorable comparison, sadly, was right in line with an erratic gubernatorial campaign laced with desperation and idiocy. Fried has attempted to position herself as Florida’s savior from the supposedly despotically inclined DeSantis. The problem for her — and for anyone who runs against DeSantis for that matter — is that over the course of the pandemic the incumbent has become an extremely popular political superstar. An increasing number of Floridians want him to continue transforming the state as he sees fit.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like many a New York progressive, headed down to the Sunshine State recently. First she was photographed having a drink with her ginger boyfriend. The youngish lovebirds were having a grand old time, and to that, as a Miami native and a lover of all things 305, I say, good for them. That’s what Miami’s here for, even for the haters. AOC is a hater, no doubt, what with her DeSantis-bashing and insufferable histrionics, but a moron she is not. She may be a ditz, but like Trump, she has a preternatural understanding of the social media political ecosystem and how to manipulate it. That's why she decided to come to Miami and decided to be photographed, smiling and maskless. AOC was not caught.

A piece in Politico titled “Democrats fall flat with ‘Latinx’ language” dropped yesterday, and as is always the case with such stories, activists and pundits took to Twitter to decry or defend “Latinx.” What was interesting this time around, however, is that some big-name progressives came out against the term. Fernand Amandi, an MSNBC analyst and the principal at Bendixen & Amandi International, the polling outfit quoted in Politico, tweeted: https://twitter.com/AmandiOnAir/status/1467843020838080512?s=20 According to the poll, only 2 percent of Hispanics refer to themselves as Latinx; 68 percent prefer Hispanic and 21 percent identify as Latino/Latina.

When we focus on the rise of the Hispanic male Republican, we overlook the emergence of his consort and counterpart, the right-wing Latina. Donald Trump made gains across the board with Hispanics in the 2020 election, but the media fixated on “multiracial whiteness” and “toxic masculinity” in the voting choices of Hispanic men. Meanwhile, Trump gained more votes between 2016 and 2020 among Hispanic women than any other sector of the electorate. The woke tell themselves that Hispanic men, with their supposed chauvinism and machismo, control the lives and voting choices of the Latina. But the opposite is the case. The Latina, with her preternatural seduction skills, holds the power in the relationship. If her curves sway to the right, the men, as they always do, will follow along.

I don’t care what LeBron James thinks or says. That's why, unlike the many conservatives who have turned their backs on sports in recent days, I can still enjoy watching him dominate on the court. LeBron, no matter how much his gaggle of managers and agents and hangers-on try to frame him as some type of renaissance man, is strictly a basketball genius. He’s been pictured quixotically staring at books, putting on his best 'intellectual face,' but I have no doubt that he’d struggle with anything beyond middle-grade young adult fiction. And that’s fine — it’s more than enough to simply be one of the greatest athletes of all time. Too many of you expect too much from our great, hulking superstars.

Swing state season, that three- to four-month stretch of peak American crazy, is upon us. The big three states — New York, California and Texas — are often considered representative of the American experience, due to their larger-than life branding and enduring economic heft. But, small outlier communities aside, the big three are politically homogeneous and ultimately predictable in their beliefs and voting patterns. That makes them utterly boring and, dare I say, un-American in sensibility come election time. America is a bipolar land of infinite complexity and chaos.