Find for me the candidate who could win only one state in the first 19 contests of a primary, repeatedly miss the viability threshold for getting any delegates at all in major states, and have headlines describing another night of third- and fourth-place finishes in a field of four as putting him “on the brink” or having sustained “another setback.” Marco Rubio is the only one, right? Because that’s somewhere beyond the brink.
But even Rubio can only spin losses into victories and more losses into just needing a little more time to catch fire for so long, and he may have reached that point. Rubio is insisting that he’s going to win Florida next Tuesday (though he lags badly in polls), and that “I believe with all my heart that the winner of the Florida Republican primary will be the nominee.” But he’s facing serious skepticism in the wake of his big losses Tuesday night.
Even in Florida Rubio is drawing subpar crowds with attendees who see attendance as, to be crass, kind of a mercy f---:
Howard Coshak, another Sarasota rally attendee, arrived clutching a Rubio bumper sticker to go along with the Rubio sticker and pin fastened to his shirt. He had considered not coming at all until his wife told him it might give a sagging Rubio a morale boost. “You’ve got to give him the psychological motivation that people are behind him,” she told him.
Ouch.
The next week will bring Rubio more credulously positive press than he deserves, but gone are the days when he can call third place a victory and have the headlines take him at his word. Instead, he may face more dropout rumors and stories about what went wrong with his campaign (most everything), with his upbeat insistence that he can still win contrasted with quotes from donors and supporters admitting they’re afraid he can’t win. And then he’ll probably lose Florida after staking everything on it. Poor little Marco.