At 15 minutes, his victory speech offered “brevity by normal Trump standards,” as Brian Williams wryly put it. Of course, in this year of surprises, nobody has come farther than Trump who took Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and (it seems) Missouri. For them, he clearly seems like glorified roadkill-a solid, uncharismatic guy who’s wandered on the highway where Trump and Cruz are tooling along in their heavily-armed Humvees. In contrast, the GOP analysts on MSNBC give him virtually no chance, and over on Fox, they scoffed at the idea that he will be the nominee. The only people who seem to think he has a prayer of winning are on the left-Chris Matthews clearly has a soft spot for him, and Maddow seems pleasantly surprised that he’s so, well, human. ![]() If you’re an admirer, I hope you enjoyed Kasich’s victory speech because you probably won’t see another. With his hugs and talk of unity, he is undeniably the fuzziest of the remaining GOP candidates (though it isn’t hard to be fuzzier than Trump and Ted Cruz). In celebration, he gave a disheveled, I’m-a-nice-guy speech where he talked of the good things yet to come for his campaign. If Rubio couldn’t hold up his end of the party’s Stop Trump bargain, Ohio Governor John Kasich did, using his favorite son status (and his huge popularity in the local GOP) to beat The Donald by more than 10 points. It was one measure of his bad night that Rubio was even heckled during his concession speech (presumably by a Trump supporter), something I’ve never even heard of, let alone seen. As Fox’s sardonic, drain-voiced Brit Hume noted, Rubio couldn’t even win his home state, in large part because Floridians thought he was too much “a young man in a hurry”-a guy who couldn’t bother to actually do the job in the senate they elected him to. One suspects that this failure had less to do with a divine master plan for Rubio than it did with the candidate’s own faults-his robotic meltdown in New Hampshire, his grade-school taunting of Donald Trump, and his all-too-sweaty ambition. God makes no mistakes,” he told the crowd of supporters, making one wonder why God wanted this cute young senator to keep losing. He officially suspended his campaign, and in the way of so many losing candidates, blamed the zeitgeist (“a real political storm”) and sought cosmic consolation. ![]() The evening had barely begun before Marco Rubio’s crushing loss to Trump in Florida ended his presidential run. Especially as what it all means was pretty much what it’s all meant for the past several weeks: While the Democratic nomination looks to be a months-long steeplechase, it’s clear that Hillary Clinton is going to beat the dark horse Bernie Sanders and while Donald Trump keeps racking up wins and knocking out opponents (Buh-bye, Little Marco), he looks unlikely to officially sew up the nomination before the GOP convention. Deep into last night’s primary coverage, even Rachel Maddow’s indefatigable good cheer seemed to be a tad forced as the MSNBC crew-like their rivals on Fox and CNN-began yet another hour of chewing over What It All Means.
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