RIGHT SPEAK: Hillary Vs. Bernie: Will The Real Chavista Please Stand Up?

Bernie Sanders complained last week that the Clinton

campaign was trying to tie him to late Venezuelan

dictator Hugo Chavez. AP

With Donald Trump still dominating election headlines, here's an under-the-radar bumfight that calls for a round of popcorn: the increasingly bitter struggle between Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to pin the Hugo Chavez tail on one another's donkey.

Jeremy Corbyn, who has expressed affinity for

terrorists such as ISIS and FARC

See, socialism, as it's being marketed by Democrats, is the key to paradise. Free health care! Free education! Free birth control! Bernie Sanders admits to being a socialist, drawing attention to his admiration for Europe's social democracies. He goes even further by praising the likes of U.K. Labour Party looney-left leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has expressed affinity for terrorists such as ISIS and FARC. Clinton, meanwhile, says she's standing up for the middle class (it used to be "working class" until the phrase repelled voters) and vows punitive taxes on the rich.

There's one little fly in the ointment here, however, and it's an ugly one: the horrific failure of socialism in the late dictator Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, which two decades ago embarked on the very socialist transformation the Democrats are calling for. There's no getting away from the pictures coming out of that suppurating corpse of a nation and the reasons for its demise.

Long Food Lines at supermarkets and food shortages

Amid all the free stuff, bankruptcy and shortages have come, the miserable process of "running out of other people's money" as Lady Thatcher put it. Standing in line for basic goods as Cubans do occupies the lives of millions of Venezuelans. Some are clubbed to death as goods are fought over. Young people prefer drug-dealing to college, given the absent opportunities for advancement. Prisoners eat cat meat. Corruption is rampant and central planning mismanagement ensures that food rots on the docks. Hospitals are crumbling from shortages, with vital cancer and hemophilia medication unavailable. Maternity wards are overrun by filthy opossums — killing dozens of newborns as they spread disease. With the focus on putting dissidents in prison, crime has overrun the country — with even a Miss Venezuela slain. Family tombs are broken into and robbed of bones. The scale of the horror, from birth to death in what Chavez called a socialist "sea of happiness" is unspeakable, and thousands of educated Venezuelans are fleeing.

Venezuelan Food Shortage Brings Looting

Suffice to say, nobody except maybe the fanatical Corbyn wants to be associated with the socialist rubble of Venezuela now that it's one of the world's top hellholes.