The American Conservative

The Washington Post absurdly declares that normalization with Cuba is “failing” because it hasn’t yet dramatically changed the country’s political system:

Yet there is scant evidence so far of a sea change in Cuba — perhaps because Mr. Obama continues to offer the Castro regime unilateral concessions requiring nothing in return.

It makes no sense to judge normalization with Cuba this way. Even if it were appropriate, it is far too soon to pass judgment on the effects of a policy that has been in place for less than a year. Opponents of normalization have been content to defend a policy of isolation that achieved nothing for the last five decades, but they are not prepared to wait even five years to see what comes from having normal relations with Cuba. The Post‘s editors also fail to grasp that the purpose of U.S. relations with another government is not to facilitate political change in the other country, but to secure the interests of our country and to promote cooperation in securing shared interests.

The chief argument for restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba is that it gives the U.S. more influence to advance its interests in relations with Havana. If a diplomatic opening helps to improve Cuba’s political system, that is a welcome side-effect, but it is a mistake to judge the merits of diplomatic engagement so quickly and to hold it to such an unrealistic standard. The U.S. shouldn’t need to have a reason to establish normal relations with one of its closest neighbors. This is something that should exist as a matter of course. It may be that having an improved relationship with Havana will eventually allow Washington to have some constructive influence on Cuban political change, or it may not, but either way having normal relations with Cuba is a good thing for both countries.

Jeet Heer anticipates the spinning that will follow tonight’s results:

It’s inevitable that some candidate in the crowded Republican field will under-perform tomorrow. How will his or her supporters spin the dismal news? History offers a guide. In 2008, Rudy Giuliani came in sixth in Iowa with 3 percent of the vote. You would think that such a terrible showing would be impossible to gild into a shining achievement. Yet John Podhoretz of Commentary wrote, “The result in Iowa could not have been better for Giuliani tactically.” David Frum, another Giuliani supporter, enthused, “Yet as the smoke clears, it’s going to become apparent that Rudy was the night’s big winner.”

This spinning for Giuliani was driven by the pundits’ desire that their preferred candidate would prevail in the end. Failure in Iowa could be dismissed because Giuliani was always a horrible fit with Iowa Republicans, and because the result fit in with his risible “wait until Florida” strategy. Heer quotes Giuliani in an old 2008 post saying this:

This is a strategy we selected–it is the only strategy that can work for us and it’s a good one…and given the nature of the race which is wide open, we think it is going to turn out to be a smart strategy.

As we know (and knew at the time), it was a ridiculous strategy, and it was never going to work in Giuliani’s favor. Despite that, Giuliani and his fans stayed on message that a poor result in Iowa was consistent with their plan, and so they pretended that failure was a rare species of victory. Ultimately, it didn’t do him any good, but it allowed his fans to keep kidding themselves that he might become the nominee.

My guess is that the Rubio campaign will underperform tonight. His campaign organization is not that good, his support is relatively soft, and he neglected to campaign in Iowa as much as many of his competitors. Like Giuliani, he has a campaign strategy that makes no sense and can’t work. Nonetheless, we already know that he has a ready supply of boosters eager to turn a mediocre showing into proof that his “moment” has finally arrived. Jason Zengerle remarked on this last night:

The way conservative pundits (and even some straight political reporters) are trying to make Rubio happen is really something.

— Jason Zengerle (@zengerle) January 31, 2016

Virtually no one will celebrate or try to explain away poor results for the other “establishment” candidates. For one thing, they have already been written off, and for another it doesn’t help Rubio to minimize the bad results of his New Hampshire rivals. The story that a lot of pundits and journalists want to be able to tell after tonight is that Rubio has exceeded expectations. That is more than a little amusing since many of them have continually gone out of their way to raise those expectations beyond what the candidate could achieve, but this is the story that Rubio boosters have to tell to keep the illusion going that his campaign strategy won’t fail. It is the story many of them will try to tell regardless of how underwhelming the result may be. Bear that in mind when we hear that Rubio is the “real” winner tonight. There was probably never going to be a result that would make his boosters say otherwise. Rubio will be just as much the winner in Iowa tonight as he was the “real” front-runner months ago. That is to say, not at all.

The final Des Moines Register poll was released over the weekend, showing Trump slightly ahead of Cruz (28-23%) and Clinton barely ahead of Sanders (45-42%). Trump and Clinton have gained ground over the last month:

Ann Selzer, whose firm conducts the polls, told me before the poll was released that the late momentum usually matters as much as the top-line results. That appears to have gone in Clinton’s and Trump’s favor. Both added supporters in January while their main rivals, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz respectively, lost some.

As Cruz has been passed by Trump, he has looked for another way to shore up his position besides attacking the front-runner. In the closing days of the contest, Cruz has directed his attacks against Rubio instead. Though the Rubio campaign wanted to spin these attacks as proof of “Marcomentum,” the poll found no evidence that Rubio was enjoying a late surge:

Support for Rubio, who has emerged as the leading establishment candidate, remained flat as the caucuses near. In fact, over the four days of the survey, his support dropped the last two days.

The thinking behind Cruz’s targeting of Rubio was that many of Rubio’s supporters are not firmly committed to backing him and could switch to another candidate. Rubio’s support is the softest of the top three Republicans:

A whopping 71 percent of Trump’s supporters say they’re certain they’ll vote for him, compared to just 29 percent who may yet switch, the Iowa Poll found. Among Rubio’s supporters, 47 percent were committed while 53 percent said they may switch to another candidate.

Cruz is the most likely to benefit if the Floridian’s supporters switch to another candidate, as Cruz is the second-choice preference of most of them. Cruz is reputed to have the best organization in Iowa, so he is better-positioned to poach uncertain supporters of other candidates than any of his rivals. I assume Cruz will outperform the 23% he received in the last poll, while I suspect Rubio will not quite get his 15% in part because he’ll lose some supporters to Cruz during the caucuses. My guess is that Trump has enough of an edge to hold off Cruz, but the final result will be close enough that it shouldn’t do too much damage to Cruz’s prospects elsewhere.

Predictions: Trump 31% Cruz 28% Rubio 13% Carson 9% Paul 7%
Clinton 49% Sanders 48% O’Malley 3%

As far as I know, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) is the first member of Congress to make a case against U.S. support for the war on Yemen in public. He spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations Friday:

But the Middle East doesn’t work like that anymore, and there is growing evidence our support for Saudi-led military campaigns in places like Yemen are prolonging humanitarian misery and aiding extremism. $90 billion in arms sales to Saudi during the Obama Administration have helped Saudi Arabia carry out a campaign in Yemen against the nominally Iranian-backed Houthis. Our government says its top priority in Yemen is defeating AQAP, arguably al Qaeda’s deadliest franchise. But this ongoing chaos has created a security vacuum in which AQAP can thrive and even expand. No expert would dispute that since the Saudi campaign began, al Qaeda has expanded in Yemen, and ISIL has gained a new territorial and recruitment foothold.

Murphy said this as part of his broader argument for reevaluating the U.S.-Saudi relationship. He also criticized Washington’s tendency to “blindly back” the client government in Riyadh. In addition to making a number of correct observations about the dysfunctional nature of the relationship with the Saudis and emphasizing their role in promoting Wahhabism in many other countries, Murphy explicitly criticized U.S. support for the war on Yemen and recommended ending that support until Saudi behavior changes in a number of ways.

One doesn’t need to agree with his entire speech or all of his foreign policy views to recognize that Murphy has done a great service by speaking out publicly against U.S. support for the appalling Saudi-led war. I recommend reading the full speech, and if you have time I’d encourage you to listen to his answers during the Q&A session shown here. He is also shining a light on the destructive behavior of the Saudis that it seems most members of Congress and the administration would rather ignore or excuse. There is still remarkably little American interest in or attention paid to the U.S. role in this war and the devastating effects the war is having on Yemen’s civilian population, and so Sen. Murphy’s remarks are especially welcome and very much needed.

Kimberley Strassel details “the Rubio gamble”:

Mr. Rubio by contrast is flouting the usual rules, playing everywhere at once and nowhere on top. It’s the Wait Them Out strategy. The plan hinges on edgy calculations and big risks. Yet given the unusual nature of this primary cycle, the approach may prove as plausible as any other.

That’s a fair description of what Rubio is trying to do, and there’s a reason no one tries to run a campaign this way: it can’t work. Rubio is now banking on a good showing in Iowa, and he will probably get a decent result with 12-15% of the vote. (It’s possible that his poor campaigning and weak organization will cause him to do worse than this, for the sake of argument let’s assume that doesn’t happen.) However, his plan requires that this produces much better results in the next several states. It’s hard to see how it does that. The best he can realistically expect in the other February contests is third place, and he will probably fall short of that in New Hampshire, where his numbers have been dropping for the last month thanks to a barrage of negative ads. No one can just “wait out” the competition without winning somewhere in the way that Rubio is trying to do. The lack of success early on reinforces the justifiable impression that a candidate isn’t viable, and that just makes it harder for that candidate to win later.

Strassel says that the Rubio campaign assumes that “a lot more votes will be up for grabs” after Iowa, but in the near term that is almost certainly wrong. There won’t be a lot, and there will be more candidates better-positioned to get the few that are available. Rubio faces stiffer competition in New Hampshire and South Carolina from other so-called “establishment” candidates, and disillusioned Cruz voters (if there are many) are more likely to go to Trump than they are to go to him. Even if Cruz is “wounded” by a second-place finish in Iowa, that doesn’t help Rubio very much, since he has to fend off Kasich and Bush as well. Unless Rubio finishes ahead of Kasich, Cruz, and Bush in New Hampshire, it is he who will be wounded and suddenly in serious trouble. Instead of being propelled onward to success by his finish in Iowa, he is more likely to be hamstrung by a weak showing in New Hampshire. His late burst of campaigning isn’t likely to make up for the months when he spent little time in the early states, and his campaign organization is very likely too small to make up the difference.

Even if several of the no-hopers drop out after Iowa, that won’t include Paul, who certainly isn’t quitting before New Hampshire. Besides, it makes no sense for Paul voters to gravitate to Rubio in any case, since Rubio represents everything about the GOP that Paul voters dislike. If Paul voters were up for grabs, that would most likely help Cruz. Since they aren’t going to be available, that leaves at most an additional 5% of the New Hampshire vote (Fiorina/Huckabee/Santorum) open to Rubio, and the remaining candidates are just as likely to win over these people as Rubio is. If Carson drops out next week, his voters are almost certainly going to prefer Cruz and Trump, but then Carson has been averaging 8-9% in Iowa and has no particular reason to quit right away if he finishes fourth on Monday.

Too much of Rubio’s plan relies on many other candidates doing exactly what he needs them to do at exactly the right time, and it assumes that none of the candidates currently polling ahead of or behind him also benefits from a late surge. Since Rubio likes football references, let’s put it another way. Like a mediocre team on the cusp of getting into a wild card game if everything goes just right, the Rubio campaign is not in control of its own destiny and needs a ridiculous amount of help from its rivals. Those teams almost never make the playoffs, and that’s because they haven’t played well enough to belong there. The only way Rubio’s plan works is for several other candidates to screw up or collapse simultaneously, which shows that it isn’t really a plan at all and has long been an exercise in wishful thinking.

The main reason to doubt that Rubio’s “gamble” will work is that he has shown very bad political judgment and has made disastrous gambles in the past. That is one of the reasons why he’s in his current predicament. He initially thought he would be boosting his political fortunes by getting behind the Gang of Eight bill, because this is what many Republican elites and donors said they wanted after the 2012 election, and then he discovered too late that it had been a terrible political mistake. Stunned by the backlash from conservatives, he then spent the next several years trying to repair the damage he had done by running away from the only major legislation he worked on as a senator. No one has forgotten his attempt to have it both ways on this issue, and that’s why the attacks ads his rivals are running against him that question his trustworthiness are so effective. It is genuinely funny to read about Rubio’s many “calculations” for the primaries when we already know that he grossly miscalculated on the biggest political gamble of his career.

The presidential campaign is ISIS’ latest victim. Michael Cohen shows how constant fear-mongering and threat inflation regarding terrorism has warped the perceptions of voters.

America should stop reassuring Saudi Arabia. Doug Bandow explains why continued U.S. enabling of the Saudis is misguided.

The forgotten benefits of offshore balancing. Paul Pillar reminds us of a time when the U.S. tried to avoid committing itself to wars i the Near East.

The case against more military advisors. Daniel Davis makes the case against further attempts to train the Iraqi army.

Is Bernie Sanders really naive about Iran? Peter Beinart counters the Clinton campaign’s criticism of Sanders’ support for improved relations with Iran.

Conor Friedersdorf wonders why Sanders’ better foreign policy judgment hasn’t mattered very much so far:

Bernie Sanders has exhibited much better foreign-policy judgment than Hillary Clinton. Yet for some reason, that’s made little difference so far in the Democratic primary race.

There are a few reasons why Sanders hasn’t been able to use this to his advantage, but probably the biggest one is that Sanders seems leery of talking about foreign policy unless he absolutely has to. For instance, Sanders has been promising to deliver a foreign policy speech for months, but he has no intention of giving it before voting starts on Monday:

With time running out before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, an aide confirmed Friday that presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has no plans to deliver a previously advertised speech on foreign policy before the first votes are cast in the Democratic race.

This may make sense for Sanders for now. His campaign has done as well as it has to date by emphasizing domestic issues, and like most Americans almost all Democratic and independent voters are much more interested in those issues than they are in foreign policy. For her part, Clinton has been trying to obscure her hawkish record, and so her record of bad judgment may not be as visible as it was in 2007-08. Sanders’ rising poll numbers have already caused Clinton and her supporters to overreach and remind Democrats of Clinton’s poor judgment when they launched an attack on Sanders for supposedly being too “soft” on Iran. Maybe Sanders thinks Clinton will discredit herself as the campaign continues. More likely, he wants to fight the campaign primarily on domestic issues because that’s what he cares about most and that’s where his greatest strengths with Democratic voters are.

Besides, except for hitting Clinton on her Iraq war vote, Sanders doesn’t really have that much he can say against her. Clinton favors a more aggressive policy in Syria than Sanders, but Sanders has repeatedly endorsed Obama’s policy in the war on ISIS and has acquiesced in the waging of an illegal war in Iraq and Syria. Sanders is constrained in what he can say against Clinton on some of these issues because many of the strongest criticisms of her that can be made require criticism of Obama as well, and attacking Obama isn’t popular with most Democratic voters.

On the Libyan war, Sanders has another problem: he appears to have supported the war at the time. There are certainly some important differences between being one of the architects of the disastrous Libyan war and co-sponsoring a Senate resolution that expressed support for a U.N.-backed “no-fly zone” in Libya, but it’s hardly the sort of sharp contrast that he needs in order to use the issue against Clinton. Sanders did go on record complaining about Obama’s failure to consult Congress before bombing Libya, but he didn’t really question the wisdom of the intervention or the desirability of ousting Gaddafi. The most that he said against it was this: “I’m not quite sure we need a third war.” That’s better than being a cheerleader for the intervention, but it’s not the rejection of the policy that it needs to be for him to use Clinton’s bad judgment on Libya against her. The upshot of this is that Clinton can shield herself from Sanders’ criticisms on Libya, and that allows her to get away with being partly responsible for one of the biggest blunders of Obama’s presidency.

Cruz and Rubio had the worst of it last night:

The frontrunner might have been wise to skip the debate after all. While he held a dueling event across town, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were confronted with video montages of their past statements on immigration, putting them each on the defensive about a contentious issue that has been elevated to new heights in the Trump era.

Both Cruz and Rubio were forced to answer for their past slipperiness and opportunism on immigration, and neither of them handled it especially well. Rubio’s performance was jittery and agitated, and he spoke even more quickly than he usually does. Cruz seemed to disappear for long stretches of the debate, though he and Rubio had the most speaking time by far. Bush had a surprisingly good night, and even scored a few hits on Rubio for abandoning the Gang of Eight bill. He echoed Lindsey Graham in saying that Rubio had “cut and run” during the debate over the bill, which had the virtue of being both true and embarrassing for Rubio. The change from his previous debate performances suggests that Bush is able to do fine among conventional politicians, but he has no idea how to handle or respond to Trump. Insofar as Bush’s performance showed that he has a reason to still be in the race, he benefited the most of any of the candidates that were on stage.

Rand Paul didn’t waste his chance back on the main stage. He made some solid arguments against NSA bulk collection, and attacked Syria hawks over their desire to fight on both sides of the civil war:

The question is, should we be bombing both sides of the war? Some want (ph) to topple Assad. In fact, they want to bomb ISIS and Assad simultaneously.

Overall, he put in another creditable appearance, and that may give him a boost going into Iowa.

The moderators started off with fairly pointless process questions that the candidates used as excuses to reuse their stump speech lines. The debate became a little more substantive as the evening wore on, and the moderators were aggressive in highlighting the more embarrassing aspects of some of candidates’ records. For example, Christie had to talk about “Bridgegate,” and Rubio had his past statements about opposing amnesty thrown in his face. Cruz also had to defend his past maneuvering on immigration, but he got the better of Rubio when he said, “We both made the identical promises. But when we came to Washington, we made a different choice.” Rubio’s support for and co-sponsorship of the Gang of Eight bill continue to drag his campaign down, and as we saw last night he doesn’t have a terribly good answer for that.

The discussion of foreign policy was mostly ridiculous as usual. Rubio was especially keen to boast about his hard-line views, and tried to turn every awkward and unwelcome question into an opening to rant about ISIS or Iran to use them as a distraction from his own problems. His go-to description of almost every adversary was “apocalyptic,” which was in keeping with his pattern of grossly exaggerating foreign threats. He pledged to renege on the nuclear deal and threatened U.S. allies with secondary sanctions:

We will — when I am president of the United States, on my first day in office, we are canceling the deal with Iran, and nations will have to make a choice. They can do business with Iran, or they can do business with America, and I am very confident they’re going to choose America before they choose the Iranian economy.

In other words, he would penalize mostly friendly countries if they refused to break an agreement that is already successfully restricting Iran’s nuclear program. Unfortunately, no one challenged him on this or pointed out the harm this would do to relations with numerous allies and trading partners. It was in these answers when his overexcited and speedy delivery made him seem very unsteady, and he didn’t convey either the seriousness or the calm that I think most people would want to see from someone seeking the presidency. I’m not a Rubio fan, but I think it’s fair to say that he had his worst debate last night when he could least afford it.

Cruz stuck to his idiotic “carpet bombing” rhetoric about ISIS, and repeated the false claim that carpet bombing was used during the Gulf War. Cruz either refuses to admit that he erred when he first mentioned carpet bombing, or he is so ignorant about these things that he doesn’t understand why it would be atrocious to do what he’s proposing. All the hawks want to make rules of engagement against ISIS more lax, which in practice means that more civilians will be killed by the bombing campaign. Bush endorsed training “a Sunni-led force in Syria to take out ISIS,” which omitted that none of the states in the region wants to commit ground forces to the war. Kasich talked a lot about organizing a military coalition against ISIS, but there wasn’t much else to his foreign policy remarks this time.

It can’t have hurt Trump to be out of the line of fire all night, and his next two closest competitors in Iowa took some potentially very damaging hits. Cruz and Rubio didn’t do very well to reassure wavering supporters and skeptical voters, and Bush showed that he couldn’t be completely written off just yet. To the extent that the debate weakened Rubio in New Hampshire, Bush and Kasich gained from the debate. Paul did a good job of offering a non-Trump alternative to the deranged hawkishness of the other candidates. It’s possible some people will punish Trump for skipping the debate, but it seems unlikely to do him any more harm than was done to his rivals. The debate certainly hurt Cruz and Rubio, but didn’t do enough to alter the race very much.

FoxNews will be hosting the next Republican debate tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. As everyone knows by now, the debate will be unusual in that the current front-runner won’t participate, and will instead have his own event of some sort scheduled at around the same time. That almost certainly means that the debate audience will shrink by quite a lot, which is why FoxNews has been so desperate to get Trump to reconsider. Trump’s absence won’t just shrink the audience, but it will also make the debate a less consequential event just a few days ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Many people have reasonably speculated that Trump is ducking the debate so that Cruz can’t inflict any damage on him before Monday, and it’s true that Trump has little to gain by attending.

The debate is important for Cruz, since he probably needs an excellent performance to take back the lead in Iowa, and it may be even more so for Rubio. Rubio needs some momentum coming out of Iowa, so a poor or mediocre showing tonight could be a serious problem for his campaign. The non-Rubio “establishment” candidates just need to have an error-free night, since none of them is competitive in Iowa anyway. As in the last debate, Bush, Kasich, and Christie will be hoping to trip up Rubio and weaken him ahead of New Hampshire, and Cruz has every incentive to try to do the same. Even though Cruz is the highest-polling candidate on the main stage tonight, more of the candidates will see an advantage in targeting Rubio than going after Cruz. Carson will also be present. I suspect the debate will be even less focused on policy than the last one, and I assume it will be more acrimonious than ever.

Rand Paul has been brought back into the main debate, which will add to Rubio’s difficulties. I expect Paul will cause some headaches for all of the hawkish candidates, but he’ll likely use Rubio as a foil for his arguments as he has done in the past. Tonight’s event gives him a final opportunity to make a favorable impression on the main stage before the first contest. Paul’s campaign has confidence that they have a solid ground game in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and a good debate performance could help inspire a better-than-expected result for him.

As usual, I will be covering the debate on Twitter (@DanielLarison).

Ross Douthat asks why Rubio isn’t winning:

Nobody’s sure why. Rubio has various weaknesses, but he’s well liked by Republican voters, he polls very well against Hillary Clinton, and nothing scandalous has emerged to derail him. Yet here we are just days from Iowa, and prominent Republicans are variously frustrated and confused, resigning themselves to Trump-versus-Cruz or attempting complicated bank shots to take one or both of them out … instead of doing what many people expected and simply rallying to Rubio.

Douthat offers some possible explanations, and there is some truth to each of them, but they leave out something. It’s true that his immigration record and opportunism have hurt him, and he is pushing a reheated Bush-era agenda ill-suited to the present Republican mood. While it is often taken for granted that Rubio is the one that party leaders and donors should get behind, he has scarcely any qualifications to be president. He has nothing like the executive experience that the other “establishment” candidates have in spades. (If you judged Rubio against Kasich or Bush just on their resumes, he is hardly the obvious “establishment” choice.) Rubio also ran away from the only major piece of legislation that he worked on in his one term in the Senate. That does not exactly scream leadership material to the people that are “supposed” to rally behind him. The fact that Rubio continues to struggle despite overwhelmingly favorable coverage in the press has to make potential supporters worry about just how competitive he would be in a general election in which he would have no such advantage.

Many people are impressed by Rubio because he delivers speeches well and performs capably in debates. He is smooth and fluent when speaking about policy (even if the things he’s saying about it happen to be dangerous or nonsensical). That may make him seem “manifestly superior” to his “establishment” rivals, since no one would confuse either Kasich or Bush for a great debater, but it’s not enough to win and keep broad support from skeptical voters. The sort of voters Rubio needs most would seem to be the ones most likely to put great stock in experience, and in terms of both executive experience and experience at the national level Rubio has virtually none. (He doesn’t really have much foreign policy experience, either, but that’s another story.) His boosters want to see him as “the Republican Obama” (young, charismatic, ethnic, etc.), but a lot of the voters he needs to win over are wary of Rubio precisely because of his relative inexperience. He is too green on the national stage while still being a lifelong politician, which is not a great combination. On the one hand, he is stuck with the baggage of being seen as a preferred candidate of party elites, but he doesn’t meet the criteria that “establishment” candidates’ voters have for picking a nominee.

The simplest explanation is that Rubio isn’t winning because he hasn’t put in the time or effort into campaigning in the early states that other candidates have, and he also hasn’t built up much of a campaign organization. (Contrast this with Obama’s 2008 campaign, which had a very strong ground game.) Rubio banked on building up support primarily through debate performances and television ads. One of Rubio’s latest ads inadvertently acknowledges Rubio’s weirdly lazy campaign for president by showing voters watching Rubio on television. That is probably how most people in Iowa and New Hampshire have encountered Rubio, and it helps explain why there isn’t much enthusiasm for him in either place. Rubio gives the impression of someone who doesn’t want to bother with the legwork of being a candidate, and especially in states where voters expect a lot more personal attention that just doesn’t cut it.

Another factor that gets overlooked in all this is Rubio’s speaking style, which often leaves the impression of an overly-rehearsed and overeager show-off. Leonid Bershidsky watched Rubio campaigning in Iowa and described what he saw:

Rubio is earnest, humorless, prone to long stories about his poor childhood in an immigrant neighborhood and his gratitude toward the country that gave his family a home and him a chance at a bright political future.

According to Bershidsky, the crowd responded politely to Rubio, but that was all. For most people, he doesn’t inspire the sort of excitement or devotion that Trump does, and that’s because he is a little too polished, too scripted, and too much the career politician (which of course is exactly what he is). Bershidsky went on to say of both Cruz and Rubio:

They try too hard, and they fail to connect on a human level.

The explanation for Rubio isn’t winning may be as simple as this: he hasn’t been campaigning enough in the early states to generate strong support there, he has been relying on a more impersonal, long-distance approach to the campaign than most of his rivals, and when he does show up in the early states he isn’t all that good at retail politics. Add in his other weaknesses, including his unappealing message of perpetual meddling in foreign conflicts, and you’ve got a recipe for a bad candidate.