We really need to win in Florida...
My experience here is that the elections are hacked, and back to 2004 there is good evidence that the Democrats should have won many more than the declared winner. Regardless, Rick Scott and friends are an environmental disaster. If you don't live here, you may not have noticed. We've passed referendums to clean up the everglades several times, but the worse-governor-ever ignores the people. Read the article at the link:
https://www.floridaphoenix.com/2018/08/03/yes-this-really-is-rick-scott-adam-putnam-and-pam-bondis-fault/
As horrified people watch dead manatees, marine mammals, fish and hundreds of sea turtles wash up on Florida’s southwest coast, politicians are tripping over one another to express concern.
But a look back eight years ago shows that three key state leaders – Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and Attorney General Pam Bondi – fought bitterly against stricter limits for the very pollution now sliming South Florida. And they started with a letter written just 10 days after they were elected.
Their opposition was ideological; In the November 2010 letter of objection to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, they complained that setting pollution limits for sewage, manure and fertilizer runoff would be an “onerous regulation” by an “overbearing federal government.”
It would also, they argued, interfere with the ability to squeeze every last dollar out of the cash cow that is the Sunshine State.
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Those folks were from 'up north' and they could be 'helped' to realize that trump threatens medicaid/medicare and their retirement.
Somehow, that doesn't happen. I wish they had a realistic town hall in the villages or some such place and put out the problems that await entitlements. Those retirees think that their bank accounts are protected via trump (and it's true, the stock market is doing okay).
But if they get hit in their ever lovin' medicare - well. That will smart!
Not everyone can be reasoned with. But some people can.
And the Hispanic vote. We should at least have the Puerto Ricans - and we don't
and found it sobering. But I've sort of mulled it over and still think that we need a response. You are probably right that we can't change those voters. But we can't just let trump's lies - even with those entrenched voters - go unchallenged.
Even if all we accomplish is to energize the Democrats in those places.....I think that's important. We need to lodge a response in every corner that we can - leave nothing unanswered. Every little bit of press that we get - and every rational argument that we make - has to help.
Anyway. I was sad to read those articles. I had retirement relatives down South for many years (all ex-NY'er Democrats). So.....pooh.
But we're in the right. So, we have to get our ideas out there AS right. (Every chance we get 
.
for Florida's intrinsic knuckledragging.
Just look at Florida high culture. Right. There's some in a few places, but it's mostly a yahoo state. Unfortunately, you're right that most of the retiree transplants vote protectively, i.e., economically conservative. But most of the state's cosmopolitanism, such as it is, and a large portion of its liberalism are transplant from more advanced regions to the north.
Me, I'm inclined to blame it above all on the extremely hot climate, especially before air conditioning, and the rampant disease and parasite infestations that once made thriving and even surviving in Florida very challenging. We now know life-challenging conditions tend to create more conservative cultures, as a glance at any world political map confirms. And we don't need to glance at a map to know that our hot states are all strongly conservative dominated and that our very cold-winter states outside their cities are also.
Yet another reason to fear global warming.
A snowbirder, and remembering that like many we can't vote to help advance our second state brings up that as another factor.
I grew up in Florida, moved away for about two decades (Texas) and returned on family issues. I just seem to remember, or want to remember, we had a bigger D presence when I was younger. I was a kid during the Nixon years and seem to remember another crook in Tally named Claude Kirk(?) , so it's not like anything new on the corruption scale in state gubmint.
Your last sentence makes me sad because I know quite a few "snowbirders" who are awesome, decent, left leaning people who have expressed the same regret on their voting limitations. I just have this habit as to asking people their state of origin whenever a conservative and or batshit crazy point of view is proffered. 
I'm guessing you're completely right about Democrats once being stronger. Probably at least somewhat like much of the rest of the country, though. Union members tended to register and vote Democrat, and so of course did more southern conservatives. The average conservative, regardless of which party registered with, often supported things they now threaten to set the nation on fire to prevent.
Sigh. And 
for this: "I just have this habit as to asking people their state of origin whenever a conservative and or batshit crazy point of view is proffered." I often do that down there too. When I don't I go with the odds and guess they're from rural Michigan.
After August, maybe you guys will start seeing signs in Florida of what Trump's endorsement will mean in the general, as opposed to primary, elections. Politico ominously profiled it called Florida's "pickleball generation" at The Villages a couple weeks ago. The author's theme really made me hope Trump makes them nervous about what he might do their investment income. Soon.
