We’re missing a major opportunity created by Fidel Castro’s retirement from the presidency of Cuba. His departure, after decades of conflict with the United States, gives the U.S. a chance to strengthen the prospects of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.

We could achieve this by presenting Cuba’s new leadership with a goodwill gift: the state of Florida.

We can encourage democracy in Cuba later. Right now, we have to protect our own.

For the second time in eight years, Florida is about to foul up a presidential election. To keep this from happening again, it would be well worth parting with everything south of Disney World.

(Usually, of course, Florida fouls things up in the general election in November. This time, it’s doing it in the primaries, which is presumably what Florida means by Early Bird Special.)

Florida and Michigan, determined to break out of the primary order set by the parties, voted early this year, Michigan on Jan. 15 and Florida on Jan. 29. Democrats, who tend to feel strongly about rules, kept their candidates from campaigning in the two states, and said Florida and Michigan would not have convention delegates.

That might have been fine if the Democrats had a candidate by now and the prodigal states could be welcomed home. (Democrats are big on both rules and forgiveness.) But instead, the party has two candidates narrowly apart – although it seems the gap is big enough to swallow up two major states.

So the Democrats have shrewdly gotten themselves into an unusual situation:

1) They can’t seat the delegates from the January Florida and Michigan primaries, which Hillary Clinton won because the party banned those races and Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.

2) They can’t NOT seat delegations from Florida and Michigan (no matter how much that might delight Iowa and New Hampshire), because after the party has a nominee it would still like to win in November, and irritating voters in two crucial swing states with nearly 50 electoral votes probably doesn’t help.

3) Prospects for revotes in Florida and Michigan have collapsed, partly because the Obama forces weren’t enthusiastic and partly because Florida Democrats insisted they had already voted.

(The Michigan Legislature didn’t like the idea, either, but Florida was really indignant.)

Admittedly, revoting in Florida would have been complicated. People pointed out that Florida has enough trouble running a regular election. And a revote would have to be scheduled early, because with a Florida election, you need to leave a lot of time for the recount.

(If Cuba doesn’t want to come get Florida, we could pack it up and send it.)

Clearly, there are different outlooks for the two sides here. For Clinton, who would be heavily favored at least in Florida, revotes would be just about her only chance to catch Obama in pledged delegates and popular votes. Obama, in the lead, would just as soon forget it, and his side is offering suggestions like dividing the two delegations in half – assuming the two states aren’t bright enough to see that also leaves them with no impact.

But Michigan, at least, would probably figure it out.

This has been a booming year for Democrats. Excitement and turnout have been huge – even in Florida, where Democrats were told the primary didn’t count, turnout was twice the level of 2004.

It would be a bad finish to this year to have the first national convention since the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to seat only 48 states.

Especially if the missing states were these two.

Unless this somehow gets fixed, there will be plenty of blame to go around, including both the Obama and Clinton campaigns and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean. Lots of party chairmen have lost elections, but Dean would be the first to misplace two states.

Still, it doesn’t seem a coincidence that Florida is at the center of it.

In fact, the question might be whether Cuba would be willing to take Florida without some kind of sweetener.

So maybe we could offer a country that has just lost its president the most recently announced candidate for our presidency.

Along with Florida, we could give them Ralph Nader.