Seven days after millions of Californians voted by absentee or in person, the hammer of the slow-counted millions of ballots fell on U.S. senator Bernie Sanders's "movement." 

He and his followers were convinced that millions of Californians would vote him into the Democratic nomination for president.  They didn't.

Sanders's followers thought they would clog the system with so many votes that Joe Biden's hopes for the nomination would be ended by a tsunami of California progressive votes.  The hope was that San Francisco progressives would ruin Joe Biden's chances of recovering from his terribly underfunded and badly run third presidential campaign.  Didn't happen.

Eight days after Election Day, CNN finally called the California vote, and the bad news for Bernie's passionate minority was that, yes, he won more votes than Biden did, but the count was a disaster for Sanders.

Bernie Sanders 34 percent, Joe Biden 27 percent.  The Democratic Convention delegate count is still being calculated, but votes cast and counted destroy the Sanders-promulgated myth that his "movement" is pervasive in the Democratic Party.

Yes, young Democrats like Bernie Sanders and his "movement."  But Young Democrats don't vote; old Democrats do, old black Democrats do also, and so do older Latino voters.  Sanders's people tried to convince Californians that his followers were everywhere in California, a true-blue blue state.

This is California, where Democrats hold every statewide elective office, control the 120-member two-house state Legislature, and dominate the House of Representatives delegation of 53 seats and have owned both U.S. Senate seats since 1992.

Yes, though Californians own the state and smashed Donald J. Trump in 2016 by four million more votes for Hillary Clinton than for Trump, the whole state is not San Francisco, where the people breathe Bernie Sanders air.  The votes are in Southern California.

For example, In San Francisco, Sanders received 87,000 votes and carried the city and county by the bay, while Joe Biden received 121,000 votes to come in second in San Diego County.  Do the math.

And, unlike San Francisco, California's south has millions more Mexican-origin people than Northern California.  Mexican-Americans are 85% of the state's Hispanic/Latino population.  They are numerous in the state's Central Valley from Stockton south to the Tehachapi Mountains.  South of those mountains, not only are they numerous, but they number in the millions.

Los Angeles County has over five million, San Diego County over a million.  San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange Counties have over two million.  It is here, in the ten Southern California counties, where Bernie was blunted.  Sixty-six percent of Democrat votes were against Bernie.  Thirty-four percent were for him — only 34 percent.

In California, that is not a "movement"; 3.4 out of ten is a cult.

One last note: California blacks make up only seven percent of the population, thus Joe Biden's 27% didn't come from black votes as they did everywhere else so far in the campaign.  Where did Biden's votes come from?  Mostly Southern California, where most Democrats are of Mexican origin.

That leads us to March 17's votes in Arizona and Florida.  Arizona with its large and growing Mexican population is favored to go for Biden.  Add to that vote retired snowbirds who have moved to Arizona in recent decades, preferring the Arizona winter to that in Minnesota, Iowa, Chicago, et al.

The Sanders "movement" will not die in Arizona, however.  It will die in Florida.  It will die at the hands of Cuban exile families who had everything stolen from them by Fidel Castro and his communist thugs in the 1960s, in the seventies, and even through today.  Political prisoners abound in Cuba; Women in White protest every Sunday and are attacked by state thugs on Havana streets even when official Americans (read: President Barack Obama) are in Cuba.

The Castro brothers and their hardcore communist thugs have taken every ounce of private property from the entire middle and upper classes they found when Castro's force triumphantly "liberated" Havana in 1959. 

Florida's Cuban-American population have forgiven some of what happened to them and their families, but not political murder; torture; imprisonment of thousands of men, women, and children; theft of property; and, lastly, the loss of any vestige of freedom Castro found when he drove into Havana in 1959.

Bernie Sanders has no idea about how Florida's Cubans feel; apparently, he doesn't care, either.  Of all the stupid blunders a politician can make, United States senator and democratic socialist candidate for president Bernie Sanders told the world on CBS's 60 Minutes that the Castro regime had done wonderful things for the Cuban people.  Castro taught some people to read and write, and the communists provided some state medical care most experts say doesn't measure up to our state-run Medicaid.

The Castros also leveled the economy so that the average Cuban today can earn a bountiful $20.00 a month.

Florida's Cubans will respond to Bernie Sanders's positive view of the Castro regime and its "accomplishments" by burying Bernie Sanders on the 17th. 

My prediction is that 75 percent or more of Florida Cuban voters will vote against Bernie Sanders, even more than the 66 percent of Democrats who voted against him in California.

Contreras is the author of Jalapeño Chiles, Mexican Americans and Other Hot Stuff.  He formerly wrote for the New American News Service of the New York Times Syndicate.

Image: AFGE via Flickr.