While the exile community in Florida and others around the world will herald Castro's departure, he was not without his admirers:

Castro clung to a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union disintegrated and most of the rest of the world concluded that state socialism was a bankrupt idea whose time had come and gone.

....his defenders in Cuba point to what they see as social progress made under Castro's revolution, including racial integration and universal education and health care. Instead of communism, they blame the U.S. embargo for the country's economic woes.

What's next for Cuba?

Update: Steve Clemons of the Washington Note wants to know Hillary and Obama's position on lifting the embargo.

Opening family travel -- and frankly all travel -- between Cuba and the US, and ending the economic embargo will provide new encounters, new impressions, and the kind of people-to-people diplomacy that George W. Bush, John Bolton, Richard Cheney, and Jesse Helms run scared from.

This is a huge potential pivot point in US-Cuba relations. Will Hillary Clinton step up to the plate -- and will Obama move beyond the somewhat timid proposals he offered previously and go to the gold standard in US-Cuba relations articulated by Senator Chris Dodd?