Good for the Dems that Rubio is just about dead. He is an impressive orator. Yes, in part that may have been because he recycled his stump speech. Nevertheless, he has a machine-gun delivery which is pretty impressive. Being young and Latino may have made an interesting contrast to Hillary and Bernie. I suspect he might be losing his hair and this, together with being only 178cm (Trump mocked him for wearing high-heeled boots), probably makes it hard for him to make it in future. Being tall with a full head of hair is just about a minimal requirement for an aspiring President. Trump is tall, even if his combover suggests he might be follicularly challenged.
The perfect result for the Dems would be Cruz winning the nomination. He is an unlikeable extremist. He rode into the Senate on the coat tails of the Tea Party revolt in 2010. He has tried to prove his Tea Party credentials by continually criticising any attempts by Republicans to reach favourable compromises with Obama and the Congressional Dems. In particular, he led a failed attempt to shut down the government rather than negotiate the budget. He boasts of being inflexibly hard-right on every issue, from getting rid of their pale version of our Medicare system to abortion to wholesale spending cuts to gun rights. This is the guy who attacked Trump for saying that he'd make sure sick people didn't die in the streets because to him this suggested Trump didn't have the ideological purity required to let the cards fall where they may.
He is also far from charismatic. I loath Trump but he has charisma to spare. Rubio and Trump have both attacked him for being a liar and Trump just calls him "Lying Ted". This means he could hardly take advantage of Hillary's perceived trust deficit. A psych professor has even speculated that the fact that his lips turn down at the corners creates an impression that he holds the public in contempt, eliciting a general desire to punch him in the face.
His ideological extremism would be a disaster in a general election. He thinks that the public's appetite for a disruptor will see them flock to him. But Trump and Sanders have shown that this appetite doesn't have much to do with a desire for a hard-right revolt. Rubio and Cruz have attacked Trump for being too liberal on abortion and health care but those attacks have backfired. Trump's "movement" is very different to the Tea Party.
The perfect result for the Dems would be Cruz winning the nomination. He is an unlikeable extremist. He rode into the Senate on the coat tails of the Tea Party revolt in 2010. He has tried to prove his Tea Party credentials by continually criticising any attempts by Republicans to reach favourable compromises with Obama and the Congressional Dems. In particular, he led a failed attempt to shut down the government rather than negotiate the budget. He boasts of being inflexibly hard-right on every issue, from getting rid of their pale version of our Medicare system to abortion to wholesale spending cuts to gun rights. This is the guy who attacked Trump for saying that he'd make sure sick people didn't die in the streets because to him this suggested Trump didn't have the ideological purity required to let the cards fall where they may.
He is also far from charismatic. I loath Trump but he has charisma to spare. Rubio and Trump have both attacked him for being a liar and Trump just calls him "Lying Ted". This means he could hardly take advantage of Hillary's perceived trust deficit. A psych professor has even speculated that the fact that his lips turn down at the corners creates an impression that he holds the public in contempt, eliciting a general desire to punch him in the face.
His ideological extremism would be a disaster in a general election. He thinks that the public's appetite for a disruptor will see them flock to him. But Trump and Sanders have shown that this appetite doesn't have much to do with a desire for a hard-right revolt. Rubio and Cruz have attacked Trump for being too liberal on abortion and health care but those attacks have backfired. Trump's "movement" is very different to the Tea Party.