Cuban Embargo

Since Fidel Castro stepped aside last February, there has in fact been real change afoot down in Cuba. The nation's development is more than cosmetic: it's a matter of survival for the ruling class.

For the first time since they have been in Congress, Florida's three Cuban-American Republicans find themselves in a brawl to stay in Washington, signaling the collapse of the Cuban-GOP connection

The U.S. doesn't have to embrace Cuba at this time, but we do need to engage, because if we don't evolve too, history won't absolve us. Obama understands this.

John McCain seems intent on embracing every failed policy of the Bush administration. Iraq, check; top end tax cuts, check. Privatization of Social Security, check. Unraveling employer based health care, check. And this weekend, McCain boldly informed the remnants of the Miami Cuban expatriots that he will sustain the most egregiously failed US policy of them all -- the Cuban embargo.

In what looks like the baby steps of a slow process of easing into changes that Raúl and his people realize are unavoidable, tourism apartheid in Cuba may become a thing of the past.

In the "inter-regnum" period of the last 19 months, there is ample evidence that Raul Castro's quiet vision is slowly changing the Cuban political landscape.

It was the express purpose of the U.S. embargo, with sanctions more comprehensive than any we impose on Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria to stop this transition. But it couldn't.

The American embargo of Cuba is one of those things that most of the political elite in Washington privately acknowledge as a failure.