On this Thursday, Oct. 29, episode of Sundial:
General Who Clashed With Biden Now Endorses Him
In this election cycle, military service members and their families are a key voting bloc. And Florida has one of the largest military populations of any state in the country.
Tens of thousands of service members are currently overseas voting through mail ballots.
President Trump won the military vote handedly in 2016. In this election cycle a high ranking official, who clashed with Biden in the past, is now supporting the former vice president as the next commander in chief.
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“[Former] Vice President Biden and I had [a] deep different view on what we should do in Afghanistan. But here is the deal, every time we worked together he listened, he expressed his opinion, I expressed mine and I felt like mine were being taken into account, being considered and in fact, [then] President Obama decided to go with the recommendation that I made over [former] Vice President Biden,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who served under President Obama as the top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan.
We spoke with Gen. McChrystal, who was fired after a 2010 Rolling Stone article portrayed him as disrespectful of Obama administration officials. Now he is endorsing Biden for president.
The Latino Vote
Political analysts say there’s no path to the White House without Latino voters.
Joe Biden has a narrow lead among Florida's Latino voters, according to a new poll from Telemundo. Still, his performance is well behind Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 and she still lost the state to President Trump.
Latinos are the largest minority group to ever take part in an election — with 32 million eligible voters this year.
“We've talked to conservative Latinos who in some cases are a little torn because the abortion issue matters to them, Supreme Court matters to them. And then perhaps they also have an immigration concern. And they're sort of weighing which one of those to end up voting for,” said Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for the New York Times.
We spoke with Mazzei about whether both parties have been doing enough to get this diverse population out to the polls.
Who Is First In Line For The COVID-19 Vaccine In Florida?
Florida’s draft vaccination distribution plan details who will be first in the state to start the immunization process against COVID-19.
The 51-page draft, which was released last Friday, includes three phases for distribution.
“The state thinks the amount of vaccinations that will be coming will be somewhat limited. So they really wanted to target it to those frontline workers, as well as people in nursing homes, who live there, because we know that they're at risk,” said Christine Sexton, a reporter with the News Service of Florida.
The first phase will focus on high-risk populations such as frontline workers and nursing home residents. The second phase would be more a mass vaccination effort, but would still primarily target people who are 65 and older.
“[Vaccinating] the general public is going to kick in with phase three," Sexton said.
Florida is currently distributing the influenza vaccine as a test run for how a potential COVID-19 vaccine could be administered — with personal protective equipment and social distancing.
