MIAMI — One of Marco Rubio’s informal circle of advisers was nervously looking at his iPhone early Tuesday evening at Rubio’s “Florida primary night celebration” at Florida International University. “The exit polls look brutal,” he told me.
He pointed to a question that asked Florida voters how they felt about the federal government — enthusiastic, satisfied, dissatisfied, or angry? Forty-five percent of the voters said they were dissatisfied, while another 40 percent said they were angry. How could the sitting senator from Florida — the highest-ranking federal official in his state — survive at the polls when 85 percent of his voters are dissatisfied or angry with the federal government he represents?
He didn’t. Donald Trump beat Rubio 41 to 34 among voters dissatisfied with the federal government and 58 to 17 among voters angry with the government. Rubio won 50 to 25 among those satisfied with the federal government, but that was only 11 percent of the electorate. (The two percent who said they were enthusiastic about the federal government was too small to divide between the candidates.)
Nevertheless, at 6:00 p.m., Team Rubio was still looking for a way to stay in the race. What if he lost by single digits, maybe 5 to 9 percentage points? If that happened, and John Kasich pulled out Ohio, then maybe Rubio could stay in as part of the general #NeverTrump effort.
After all, Rubio had been saying for a couple of days that he would go on to Utah Wednesday, win or lose. He would campaign in the next primary state, and then do some fundraising in California, and then on and on. Of course, he had to say that. But when the votes actually came in Tuesday night, the results were as brutal as the exit polls. Trump won with 45.8 percent to Rubio’s 27.0 percent — almost exactly the margin the polls had predicted going into the primary.
A discussion was held. Rubio made the only decision he could, and by 8:15 p.m. he was at the podium, his family by his side, announcing that his campaign was over. “While it is not God’s plan that I be president in 2016, or maybe ever,” Rubio told a deeply disappointed crowd, “and while today my campaign is suspended, the fact that I’ve even come this far is evidence of how special America truly is, and all the reason more why we must do all we can to ensure that this nation remains a special place.”
There were shouts of “We love you, Marco!” and “We’re proud of you!” and exhortations for him to stay in. And there was a heckler who appeared to be a Trump supporter but was in fact one of the guys, members of a weird comedy troupe, who interrupted a Rubio rally in The Villages a few days ago. The act seemed particularly boorish on this night.
The Rubio campaign picked a small venue for such an important event. It was at the FIU Arena, a basketball facility that seats 5,000. But it was held in the rather narrow atrium outside the arena itself. The space couldn’t accommodate a very large crowd, but the crowd wasn’t very large. It was not, after all, an event for a general audience. John McCain used to joke that when his presidential campaign was on the skids, his audience dwindled to paid staff and blood relatives. The Rubio crowd wasn’t that different.
I walked up to one woman to ask her thoughts, and it turned out she was the mother of a key Rubio staffer. I approached a man who turned out to be the father of another Rubio aide. Others were soon-to-be-unemployed staff and volunteers. This was a night for the people closest to the Rubio effort.
Anybody there, including Rubio himself, might well have thought back to the sky-high hopes after his well-received campaign launch at Miami’s Freedom Tower last April and ask: What happened?
But people weren’t really in the mood for analysis. Several mentioned the brief phase of Rubio’s campaign in which he turned into an insult comic targeting Trump. Everybody was disappointed in that. Or maybe it was the zillions of dollars in negative ads dropped on his head by his so-called friend Jeb Bush. But on a sad night, nobody wanted to dig too deeply.
Many were more likely to blame the voters — they’re just too angry — than Rubio. Indeed, that might become the accepted pro-Rubio explanation of his loss; the country, in the middle of a temper tantrum, just wasn’t in the mood for a fellow as sunny as Marco Rubio.
Certainly they didn’t blame Rubio for his disastrous foray into comprehensive immigration reform. But the fact is, the Gang of Eight tarred nearly everything Rubio did afterward. First, much of the Republican base disapproved of the bill’s basic provisions.
Second, Rubio’s tortured efforts to distance himself from his own work looked like a massive flip-flop.
Third, many Republicans suspected Rubio of doing Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s bidding, which is about the worst thing that can happen to a GOP senator.
Fourth, Rubio’s defense of the bill sometimes boiled down to accusing rival candidates of being as bad as he was, which wasn’t much of a defense.
And fifth, on the issue front, especially on economic policy, some voters who were especially concerned about jobs saw Rubio as an advocate for bringing more foreign workers to the U.S. at the expense of Americans already here. It was the problem that kept on giving.
The whole episode seemed to cast doubt on Rubio’s judgment. A few days ago, as he criss-crossed Florida in the campaign’s final hours, Rubio stopped by a coffee shop in Lakeland. I met a man named Richard Dempsey there, who told me he was a Rubio fan ever since the candidate came to Lakeland in the 2010 Senate race. “I was so impressed with his grasp of the issues,” Dempsey told me. “And so I was immensely disappointed that he aligned himself with John McCain and Lindsey Graham when he got there, and I think that’s going to be the thing that he’s going to live with for the rest of his life.”
In his campaign’s last days, Rubio seemed to point a finger at much of the political world for Trump’s success. “There will be a reckoning,” he told Politico. “There will be a reckoning in the mainstream media, where all these networks and cable networks are going to have to ask themselves why did they give so much coverage for the sake of ratings. There will be a reckoning in the conservative movement, where a lot of people who for a long time have espoused conservative principles seem to not care about those anymore in rallying around Donald Trump because they like his attitude. I think there are a lot of people in the conservative movement who are going to spend years and years explaining to people how they fell into this and how they allowed this to happen.”
It was hard to tell whether that was more analysis or threat.
In the end, Rubio told the crowd that he lost because he ran a hopeful and optimistic campaign in a year in which angry, pessimistic voters just weren’t interested in hope and optimism. “This is the right way forward for our party,” Rubio said of his approach. “This is the right way forward for our country. But after tonight it is clear that while we are on the right side, this year, we will not be on the winning side.”
“And so, while this may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic message about our future, I still remain hopeful and optimistic about America.”
Rubio is 44 years old. In the past, the Republican Party has been kind to losing candidates who give running for president a second try. And Rubio has plenty of time to give it another go. As I was leaving the FIU Arena, a man I had briefly chatted with earlier tapped me on the arm. He motioned to the big Rubio campaign bus and said simply, “He’ll be back.”
