Have the Miami Cubans saved America from socialism?

Sure looks like it.  Sanders was on the top of the heap in the Democratic presidential race...right until he made remarks praising Fidel Castro on 60 Minutes.  At that point, Democrats started consolidating like little tin soldiers behind Biden, the South Carolina primary gave Biden a solid win, and the Sanders bubble seems to have popped.  But the slide downward seems to have been initiated when Florida's Latinos, many of them refugees from socialist hellholes such as Cuba, as well as Cuba's satellites such as Nicaragua and Venezuela, spoke out against Sanders's praise for the dictator's "literacy programs," which were little more than force-fed propaganda on a nation that already was literate to start with.  Color Florida gone...

The reaction to Sanders from Florida was negative, indeed, and from there on, the news for Sanders never got good.  It was as if that incident set off a chain reaction in states very far from Florida.  Florida itself holds its primary on March 17.

We all know it's out of reach for Bernie.

Politico in fact is declaring Bernie Sanders all washed up after Tuesday's wipeout in the second wave of the Super Tuesday primaries.

Unlike last week, when Sanders supporters celebrated a win in California and could argue that Elizabeth Warren's share of the vote cost him victories in Minnesota and Maine, Tuesday delivered the two-person contest Sanders craved. And Joe Biden routed him, starting in Missouri and Mississippi and continuing through Michigan.

The outcome in Michigan undermined what little remained of Sanders' electability argument with white, working-class voters, given how central the state is to Democrats' hopes in November. A close contest in Washington served as an indictment of his ability even to hold onto his base.

"The window is closing for Bernie. Losing states that he won last time in a scenario where he's got a clean head to head is pretty damning for his candidacy," said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns. "The most crucial barometer for him is, 'Has he expanded his coalition?' And time after time we see that he hasn't."

This is a pretty miserable picture for the Bernster.

The wailing from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in fact, can be heard to California.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that Sanders couldn't win Florida after spewing such stupidity that caused the chain reaction.  Many Democrats, in fact, are motivated to vote for whoever they think can beat Trump, in what's their version of "broken glass" voting.  With Sanders on the outs in Florida, they moved on to someone who could somehow manage to avoid praising Castro on the campaign trail in a way that wouldn't cost them a critical swing state.

Biden, for all his blunders, so far has managed that much, so now he's in the lead.  Although it would be great fun to watch President Trump take down Sanders in the general election, or debate the clown and destroy him then and there, Republicans and all freedom-loving people can console themselves that a naked socialist takeover is now never going to happen.

Image credit: Lorie Shaull via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.