Mitch Perry
We’ll save you our post-mortems about Marco Rubio‘s failed candidacy for the presidency, since you can find them all over the web this morning. We wrote last week how startled we were about the lack of support in his own state, and that was before Alex Leary‘s devastating portrayal in Sunday’s Tampa Bay Times.
A notable thing about Rubio – his inability to raise a lot of money. Though it’s become chic this year to say that money doesn’t matter as much as it used to (referring to how poorly Jeb Bush did compared to Donald Trump), but Rubio is no Bernie Sanders in raising money. And oh yeah, he wasn’t too good at having a basic ground game to gather up votes.
Now, what about the Dems?
Boy, it was a rough night for Bernie Sanders supporters here in Florida. The polls were modest, actually, in comparison to what actually happened last night, as Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points.
So is Bernie So Over Now?
His strategists say that the calendar looks more favorable to him.
“We’re now entering a period where we think we’ll win most if not all of the contests before the April 19 primary in New York,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders. “Regardless of how much momentum we have after Tuesday, the calendar is shifting in our favor. Now we just have to win some major showdowns, like in New York and New Jersey, to raise questions about whether she can really win the presidency.”
That’s extremely optimistic.
Will Bernie go negative? Probably not. He’s already had a significant influence on how Clinton is running this race. Can he continue to do so, while still needling her? He’s got the money to stay on the trail for awhile. How does he do it? He’s got to win upcoming states.
Oh, by the way. I’ll never be called a “pundit,” because those folks make sh*t up to fill airtime. I couldn’t believe how some folks were saying yesterday afternoon on cable news how Marco Rubio could still take his delegates with him and continue to campaign, even if he were to lose last night.
WTF? There is a thing called dignity. There is no way that Rubio was going to continue to go out on the stump today in Utah and say … well, what? “We’re going on to Cleveland with little chance of winning, but we’ve got our delegates to maintain to stave off Donald Trump!”
Too many people are being paid too much money to pontificate on TV because of the demands of the medium.
In other news …
Political pros Adam Goodman and Steve Schale break down the election results today at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club.
Over half a million dollars was spent by a super PAC on Marco Rubio’s behalf over the next couple of weeks.
Donald Trump Florida Chair Joe Gruters says the RPOF will come together in support of Trump later this year.
Former House Speaker Will Weatherford isn’t so sure.
Congresswoman Kathy Castor will be joining Barack and Michelle Obama when they travel to Cuba this weekend.
