Halperin: ‘No Indication’ Rubio ‘Is Going to Win His Own State’

SCARBOROUGH: “I watched as I always do, what about Don Rickles last night while smoking a big cigar and you know, looking at my picture —“ [crosstalk]
BRZEZINSKI: “I love watching your show.”
SCARBOROUGH: “It’s great.”
BRZEZINSKI: “With all due respect.”
SCARBOROUGH: “And you guys tried to talk about the way forward, how Rubio wins, how Cruz wins, how Kasich wins and at the end of that entire exercise I decided that the only thing that they all needed to beat Donald Trump was magic pixie dust. (Laughter) There’s just no way they’re going to beat him unless something cataclysmic happens out there.”
HALPERIN: “Well, the debate tonight is a possible moment where they could change things. You know, they need to try. You saw in those clip there is Rubio and Cruz now starting to talk about certain things about Trump that they think are vulnerabilities. But, you know, first of all, it’s not a multipronged attack and I think everybody believes that that’s what it’s going to require. And second of all, I think these attacks are kind of one offs. They still need kind of a an overall frame why they think Donald Trump is not the right person rather than a scatter shot approach. Look, there’s almost no way you can conceive of a scenario of any of these guys actually stopping him in this crowded field.”
SCARBOROUGH: “So, Mark let me —“
HALPERIN: “It starts, though, with winning their own homes states and right now none of them necessarily will win their own home state.” [crosstalk]
SCARBOROUGH: “Rubio is in the worst position to win his own home state —“
HALPERIN: “Right.”
SCARBOROUGH: “— which raises the next question — why do we still have establishment members of the Washington, D.C. clique getting on team Rubio when they have to know if they know anything about politics that this is doomed.”
HALPERIN: “Well, look, Rubio could have a better Tuesday than some people are currently thinking in states like Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, he could have a decent Tuesday. He’s not going to necessarily win any states but he could come away with a number of second-place finishes and a number of delegates to live to Florida. Now, again, the fallacy, I think in living to Florida is there’s no indication he’s going to win his own state. So, he’s living to fight another day and losing at home, probably. But there is psychologically, I think, that Rubio folks can say ‘Here’s how we do it,’ and he’s going to try to hang on until then allowing Trump to continue to run effectively against three people dividing the anti-Trump vote.”