Cuaderno Latinoamericano: Cuban Americans and the 2004 election - If John Kerry is smart, he'll focus on Florida's Cuban-American community and wrap that state up. It's all he needs to win, and the fruit is ripe for the picking. George Bush, pandering to a fringe elements of anti-Castro hardliners, has alienated even some of his erstwhile allies in the Cuban-American community in Florida. As Ryan Lizza has written, if John Kerry can kick it up a notch in his attentions and pretensions to George Bush's ill-advised crackdown on Cuban Americans' connections to family in Cuba, then he'll win Florida, and thus the entire election, handily. Can Kerry play this card correctly? I think so. All he has to do is open his mouth more, and I'm sure that whatever comes out, short of an outright love fest with Castro, will be seen as signs of a welcome attention to this community that feels maligned by Bush.