Rubio We Hardly Knew Ye

Marco Rubio is not doing well.  Just for the record I had figured that Rubio would end up the nominee.  My thinking was that Jeb! Bush was weak from the get go and that the establishment and elites in the Republican Party would flood Rubio's way and with their money and connections he would get bullied into the nomination, but that hasn't happened.  Trump and Cruz have really over achieved in this campaign cycle.

Rubio has just never taken off as a candidate.  Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com posits that Rubio never had a base to build off.  That could certainly be true.  He could be a boutique candidate.  On March 8th Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi had primaries and that's a pretty diverse group of states.  Rubio didn't land a single delegate out of the four.  Since the start of the primaries we've had caucuses or primaries in twenty-four states and territories.  These states swing from liberal leaning northern states to ultra-conservative southern states and Rubio has only won Minnesota and Puerto Rico.

Nate Silver feels that Rubio's core supporters are educated conservatives and to be honest that is more or less the definition of the Republican establishment.  Educated conservatives, politicians and political operatives are basically the establishment group.  The elites are really the billionaire class funding it all.  But what it looks to me is that Rubio has the establishment vote and only the establishment vote and that should scare the hell out of the Republican establishment.  The Republican establishment doesn't even have the sway in their own party to drive their chosen candidate to the nomination.

Rubio's strategy seems to be to hold out to the convention and then try to be the consensus candidate.  He may also be hoping that as more liberal states have their primaries that he seems to do better with those states, but he is running as a conservative so he's not going to pick up many moderate voters except as a protest against Cruz and Trump.  Right now Rubio is trailing Trump in Florida polls by double digits and Rubio is from Florida.  The one thing that he does offer is a block on Cruz and Trump in gaining the necessary delegates to go into the convention as the outright winner.  But if he's hoping to get to the convention and win the nomination win a brokered fashion there's the phantom of the backlash that will occur if Trump goes into the convention with the lead and loses the nomination.