Bernie Sanders has always had a soft spot for Fidel Castro and the communist dictatorship the latter created. But instead of keeping it to himself and off the air, he went all out to praise Cuba's brutal regime for its phony "literacy" and "free" health care on 60 Minutes. Now Florida's Democrats are panicking.

According to the Miami Herald:

During that interview, a clip of which aired on CBS Sunday night, Sanders counted healthcare and education among the reasons that the Cuban people didn't rise up and overthrow Castro after his 1959 revolution. "You know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program," Sanders told Cooper. "Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?" "There are a lot of dissidents imprisoned in Cuba," Cooper said to Sanders.

That's a big — real big — exploding cigar.

The only reason people didn't overthrow Castro was their great love of all his "free" health care? No, he tortured, killed, and imprisoned them first. Crap like that is likely to cost the Democrats Florida.

According to the Herald, here's what went down:

Video clips of Sanders' remarks on 60 Minutes were quickly shared on social media. Some Miami-based Democrats said Sanders' response is politically damaging in South Florida, home to more than 1 million Cuban-Americans. "Democrats, nominating this man will absolutely re-elect Donald Trump and end our Constitutional republic," tweeted Miami-based Democratic strategist and pollster Fernand Amandi. "You can practically hear Miami crack off Florida and go spinning into the ocean," Miami-based author Roben Farzad tweeted.

It's toxic, absolutely toxic, to be spewing false stories about the glories of Castro's regime, which, at last count, has driven approximately 20% of the population of the island to flee for their lives from it, often in leaky rafts.

That's because quite a few of the locals — those very important Latino-vote locals that Democrats covet — know firsthand about life in a socialist hellhole. For Bernie to praise this particular failed system to those who have fled it, instead of just claim that his socialism will be a really good socialism, is the height of stupidity, a mistake so bad that the Democrats recognize that it could take them all down with him.

According to Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:

Well, Bernie can write-off Florida; literally, write it off. This is such a mega-mistake, it's impossible to overestimate. Bernie Sanders doesn't even need to bother campaigning in Florida… and I'll be surprised if he doesn't lose the Democrat primary to Bloomberg… that's how big an effen' deal this is. The Latino, Cuba, Argentina and Venezuelan community in/around Miami-Dade is the central voting block for democrats; proud and loud. However, there is one issue, one central issue so encompassing they will walk away. The murderous bloodthirsty Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is hated with the blazing sun of a thousand supernovas…. This is a non-optional outlook. Get on the wrong side of that position and there is NO recovery. He's done. Bernie Sanders looking for the not-so-bad side of Fidel Castro, or the current Castro regime, is a non-starter for Miami-Dade Latinos. Period. There is no national electoral issue equivalent for this position. It is intensely personal, and you can't throw a rock without finding a family with a first-hand victim account from Castro's brutality.

Sundance can throw in the Nicaraguans, too — tiny nation there, big nation here — with tens of thousands of their nationals now citizens here. Here's just one, describing what went down with all that vaunted "literacy." They too know what it's like to flee a socialist hellhole with all that free health care and literacy Bernie praises.

Here are some choice tweets:

florida dems are officially in panic mode after sanders praised fidel castro in his 60 minutes interview



here’s gwen graham:https://t.co/MFPnEPbSZk https://t.co/Jkrop4JZEc — Thao Nguyen (@helloitsthao) February 24, 2020

I'm hoping that in the future, Senator Sanders will take time to speak to some of my constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant like Fidel Castro. https://t.co/Iwvmay9LOH pic.twitter.com/KT9sQ0pfkh — Donna E. Shalala (@DonnaShalala) February 24, 2020

Sundance has more. And Fidel Castro is now trending on Twitter.

For Democrats, that's panic time.

The Latino refugees and now voters of Florida know. They really, really know. They know that Bernie's promise of a socialist paradise is false because they've heard it before. And they sure as heck aren't interested in getting fooled again.

This is a very important detail, because the press will soon be calling them "intransigent" and other crapola, subtly making Bernie the victim instead.

It's absolute garbage.

Number one, the first thing all these voters will remember is that all of these socialist hellholes began with pretty promises of free stuff for everyone, just as Bernie promises, everything democratically done, everything "for the people." All they saw, though, was an immensely empowered government with zero freedoms left for them, taking complete control over what they read, what kind of health care they get, and what they are allowed to think. Socialists such as Bernie claim it's a "tradeoff" — less freedom but more free stuff, daddy government taking care of your every need — but these voters know firsthand that that's a naked lie. Once the people lost their freedoms, they get nothing, not one thing. Cuban kids eat ice to stave off hunger. Today's "stat of the day" from Venezuela from Axios's Mike Allen is that one third of the people all these goodies were promised to ... are literally starving. It's billed as a "stat of the day." For Venezuelans involved in this, that's no bite-sized factlet to move on from, it's the ugly, ugly, ugly and ongoing reality and why they want that socialist hellhole regime gone.

Communism in fact is the vilest lying system ever devised, with millions of dead to its name. Babalu Blog's distinguished Yale professor contributor, Carlos Eire, has a superb list of just why Sanders might really be calling it appealing and none of his reasons are attractive reasons. Not one good thing can be given to it.

With all power in the hands of the state, citizens lose their power to make any choices in their lives. At the same time, central planning will ensure that only a nomenklatura party elite will ever be serviced by the all-powerful state, the locals will be left with no food, no health care, no libraries, and no right to complain about it, either, because the freedom's gone. At that point, they know the only thing they will ever be reliably fed by communists are lies.

Only someone who has lived through that can see through the false promises that Bernie's making. These voters have heard those phony promises before and the consequences for them were dire.

Democrats have every reason to be panicking, because this could not just put the state in Trump's column, it could make it red for years to come, taking down all the down-ballot political slots, too. That would explain why Shalala is panicking. Bernie's given them reason to be running scared.

As for the rest of us, thank God for Miami Cuban-Americans. America saved them from socialism by letting them in, and now they might just save America from socialism by voting these socialist Democrats out.

Image credit: Needpix, public domain.