National Journal: “One of the biggest political stories of the coming 2016 presidential election happened in Florida last week via an explosion that didn’t happen. President Obama notified Congress that he intended to take Cuba off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, another step toward normalizing relations with the island nation. One or two decades ago, such an act would have unleashed storms of protest in Miami, with bipartisan outrage among Florida’s elected leaders.”

“The response last week? Almost nothing. No marches on federal buildings. No mass demonstration on Calle Ocho. What was one of the most reliable voting blocs for Republican candidates in Florida is no longer unified on what once had been an organizing principle—Cuban regime change. A Florida International University study last year shows that a majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County are in favor of ending the embargo, with the younger generations overwhelmingly supportive.”

Charles C.W. Cooke: “There is no doubt that the manner in which Obama has behaved as president has contributed significantly to our present anxieties. Indeed, one can only imagine that students of political language will one day be fascinated by the gaping hole that has opened up between his campaign rhetoric and his governing prose.”

“And yet, for all of the incumbent’s failures, it seems clear that America’s present funk did not begin in earnest on January 20, 2009. Rather, it can be dated back to the attacks of September 11, and to their various consequences. In a similar vein, it should by now be obvious to conservatives that the last American Golden Age obtained not during George W. Bush’s rather disappointing tenure, but in the mid- to late- 1990s, when the Republican party ran both houses of Congress and Democrat Bill Clinton ran the executive branch. If they are to run a successful campaign — and, crucially, if they are to capitalize upon the electorate’s present dissatisfactions — Republicans will need to acknowledge that they are not only running against the Obama administration, but against a broader national melancholia to which they themselves have contributed.”

Doug Sosnik: “After picking up nine seats in the 2014 elections, Republicans maintain a decisive 54-seat majority in the Senate. In 2016, they will face a much more difficult map that coincides with a presidential election year. Nineteen months before the 2016 elections, the contours of the race for the presidency are only now starting to take shape. But one thing that is clear at this point is that the outcome of the presidential race will likely determine control of the Senate.”

Key factor: “The 2016 presidential and Senate target states are almost perfectly aligned.”