Instead of bowing to their pressure, Obama said if he were elected President he would ease restrictions on travel for Cuban-Americans to visit or send money home. I have argued for years that if we lifted the embargo, Castro would not be able to keep the tight grip that he has on that island.
I'm glad that a Presidential candidate has finally let go of the fear of a single-issue community and has instead decided to go with a common sense solution.
From MSNBC:
"Senator Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. "His concern is that this has had a profoundly negative impact on the Cuban people, making them more dependent on the Castro regime, thus isolating them from the transformative message carried by Cuban-Americans."
The current policy is a failure and has done nothing but assist in solidfying Castro's grip on Cuba. Both Repub's and Dem's have all supported this policy for decades, do to their pandering to Cuban voters in south Florida, particularly in Miami-Dade.
Obama is correct in arguing for a change in the policy. And as a result, he's is likely to make in-roads with Cuban voters who also want the policy changed. And the most likely group of voters to be open to Obama as a result of his stance on this issue, are with Cuban voters under the age of 35. This age group is several generations removed from the time Castro came to power. And as a result, they view this issue quite differnetly from their parents generation.
And quite frankly, from a moral perspective, changing the policy is the right thing to do.