Val Demings and Marco Rubio debate in Florida

Marco Rubio’s Weak Debate Performance Has Twitter and Morning Joe Crew Buzzing

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In evaluating Tuesday night’s debate between Marco Rubio and Val Demmings, the first thing that stood out was Val Demming’s strength, command of facts, moral authority, and passion for the issues dominating the day. And while the buzz on Twitter and with the Morning Joe crew has focused more on Rubio’s passive and nervous approach, it is critical to note that he faced an extremely skilled and prepared opponent. But it is difficult to picture Rubio doing worse. That is an amazing statement, given this was a man who did have promise (early) as a moderate who was going to fix immigration and might ascend to the top of a Republican ticket.

Joe dove right in. The video is below:

“Marco Rubio most likely will win, it could be a tight race — we’ll see how it goes, Florida has been trending Republican, obviously, strongly in 2020, but Val Demings did a very good job last night. I’ve got to say, and this is where I wish I could ask [NBC News correspondent] Mark Caputo this, but he’s a reporter and can’t really answer it. [I’m] getting a lot of phone calls people seeing the debate saying, this Marco Rubio. Everybody I talked to said something happened to him in 2016, like Donald Trump happened to him, got into his head, and he just never recovered.”

Quote continues below tweet:

“He seemed off balance last night, he would have pat answers — the Second Amendment right… if you take guns away from people only criminals — just these pat answers you would hear somebody in a middle-school debate make where they were pretending to be in a Senate debate, He seemed shrill, and he seemed sophomoric, he seemed sweaty. I just don’t know that he ever recovered from Donald Trump in 2016 beating him as badly as he did in Florida.”

He looked like he wished he could be anywhere else. There was a point in the debate where Rubio said that in ten years in Congress, Demmings had never passed a bill. Demmings took control of the entire debate calmly and quietly, saying that there was a point in time when she couldn’t imagine Marco Rubio lying. She looked sad. She sounded disappointed. Rubio slunk down as Demmings talked about a law-enforcement bill that helped local police and sheriffs. Rubio never looked weaker. Demmings had a presence, the only leader on stage. Continues below:

Whether Donald Trump got in Rubio’s head? It is far more likely that the MAGA movement is in Rubio’s head, and he hates himself for going along with this. Rubio is more cerebral than most on the MAGA right. He is not heartless. And the son of Cuban immigrants who were not American citizens when Rubio was born has to swallow hard every time he hears about immigrants ruining the country. It would be hard for Donald Trump to have devastated Rubio personally, but it’s entirely possible that Rubio’s “shadow of himself” existence right now is more easily ascribed to being repulsed by what he’s forced to accept as his “group.” Video of Joe below.

It didn’t have to play out this way. As Joe said in finishing:

Marco Rubio once seen as the future of the Republican Party. A Time Magazine cover talking about him being the future of the Republican Party, and what I saw last night was just a shadow of that guy.”

He will still likely win but it’s surely closer this morning than it was yesterday.

 

 

Jason Miciak
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