It All Depends Upon Gut Feel

If Marco Rubio thinks that he has a real chance at the presidency in 2028, he must be lost in thought a lot of the time.

Some of those thoughts might be:

• How much of MAGA could I realistically get?
• Do I even care about MAGA (are there enough of them to build a winning majority?)
• What are other identifiable groups that I should aim for?
• Do I have to shed one skin and crawl into one utterly dissimilar?
• What would that skin look like?
• Would it be A Coat of Many Colors?
• Why am I working for this fucking moron?

If Marco has any real desire to be president, he's going to need to get through these questions and all the other ones that I am leaving unasked - but the first few make obvious what most of the others must be - and answer them and get going damn fast.

That screams of the need to resign as Secretary of State immediately.

There are all kinds of reasons for that, but the biggest one is that if he runs for president, he'd be a fool not to viciously, constantly, and accurately, attack the current president.

He needs enough time to say "I've had enough and I can't take any more" incessantly so that it becomes believable, repetition being the mother of truth.

What he "can't take any more" is such a rich trove that not much needs to be said about it.

But one thing stands out glowing white hot.

The biggest issue is the the most profound strategic error made by a president in the last century and a quarter.

That's the main course.

Get that message down, concise, focus group tested and practiced down to the last gesture.

Then feature the rest of the trove as necessary, and as the crowd seems to want it: sleeping through meetings, threatening NATO, grifting several billion dollars net worth since 20 January 2025, tearing down the White House, dismantling the Atlantic Alliance, dismantling NATO and whatever other tidbits come to mind; they can be sprinkled as condiment upon the main course: the war and the MOU.

That being the nucleus upon which he must build his campaign and considering the fact that a sitting Secretary of State cannot run a campaign based on “the president is a danger to the republic” he must resign post haste if he wants to be president.

That nucleus is rich fodder for a campaign but it's sorta niche: most Americans think tactics are strategy and that The Atlantic Alliance is a 60's singing group; but that rich niche is a really good start perfectly tailored to an apparent Marco strength: foreign policy.

And hard though it is to choose that's donnie's Achilles Heel.

And od thought it is, running against him will be the main event in 2028.

Unless he dies or is impeached.

Then I guess I better re-think all of this.

But, all things remaining as they are Marco is going to have to make a decision: reign or not.

Since that decision is obviously only on the table if a run for president has already been decided, that decision seems obvious.

And, once that decision has been made public, he's too skilled a politician to let himself - even for a moment - be confined to thinking or acting like a republican, or even, trying to think or act like a Democrat; he knows you win in troubled times by showing the people reality and convincing them that you care about their stake in that reality, and that you can deliver the beginning of a basis for a better life for them; that requires a currently unseen kind of animal.

He must be going through these thoughts constantly:

• Far Left is not me and it's risky.
• Far Right is not really me and I probably can't turn over enough rocks to get all of them.
• The middle probably hasn't got the electricity to merge with other stripes for me, Marco Rubio.
• None of these groups alone can win - the only path is fusion.

Lotta questions with answers TBD.

I think if there is a legitimate election in 2028 - not for certain in my opinion - the winner is going to be the one who figures out how to, as effectively as Bernie Sanders, get the guts of the Build Back Better bill presented as America's vision and get most or all of the rational center to wholeheartedly ally with the lunatic left in pursuing that set of goals:

• economic dignity
• industrial renewal
• climate transition
• family support
• infrastructure
• a moral vision of shared prosperity

That vision isn’t mysterious - it’s the same set of goals that briefly unified the country under the banner of Build Back Better when Biden tried to bring The New Deal into the Twenty First Century.

Oddly I think Marco could pull that off:

• There is no Republican Party anymore.
• People who pretend that there is a Republican Party are mentally or morally devoid of structure. 
• So, there's nothing there to build upon.
• There is nothing in it for Marco to continue to hope that trump won't turn on him.
• And there certainly is nothing in it for Marco to be blamee designate for stupid foreign policy.
• And there is no place for a rational human being in a MAGA primary.

All he needs to do is resign and say "the lord knocked me off my horse and I have seen the light".

No wonder Marco looks vacant when he has to stand on various stages or sit in various rooms with donnie where donnie talks about how great donnie is.

Copilot told me to add this: "Rubio’s only path is to break with Trump, resign, seize the one issue where he has credibility, and use it as the gateway to articulate a national moral‑economic vision that fuses the rational center with the moral left — the only coalition that could plausibly win in 2028."

And I add: 

That might work because Marco really hasn't pissed anybody off much and nobody would expect it.

But the problem then is what party is he going to run in?

I think I have ruled out republican, rump or MAGA.

I can't see how it's the Democrats; but George Conway is trying it.

So, it's probably Third Party.

That never works.

But maybe with two years to go Marco's party morphs to "Other Party" at the expense of whatever the GOP turns into?

Maybe this is that 1856 moment we have all been looking for?

•