I am pretty much with most of the GOP electorate. I like Florida [mc_name name=’Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’R000595′ ] but he’s my second choice. He’s an attractive candidate but today he tried to play it too cute by half. In a campaign stop in Florida, Rubio offered an exceedingly mild critique of Donald Trump:

“Ultimately the Republican Party will reach out to all voters based on who our nominee is. And I don’t believe Donald Trump will be our nominee,” the Florida senator said after speaking to a small crowd outside a car service center in this town of Orford. “I think our nominee is going to be someone that embraces the future, that understands the opportunities before us, that’s optimistic but realistic about the challenges before us.”

Meh. I’m not sure it is accurate but that is the line Rubio is taking. Then he followed it up with this:

He acknowledged that “people are angry” and “they have a right to be,” but insisted that “we should allow that anger to motivate us, but we shouldn’t allow that anger to define us. We’re not an angry nation. We are an optimistic nation who has every reason to be optimistic about the future.”

If Rubio really believes this he should get out of the race now.

Americans are angry. Very angry. They have been since 2010. And they have every reason to be. The right direction/wrong direction polls are hovering in historic negative territory with nearly two thirds of the nation thinking we are on the wrong track.

For the first time in our history, a substantial majority of Americans believe their children will be worse off than their parents. Half of the nation believes America’s best days are behind it.

Senator Rubio’s slick word game:

“There’s another gentleman running for president whose slogan is Make America Great Again. And I understand what he’s trying to say. But I would remind him that America is great,” Rubio said. “Ask yourself this question: who would you trade places with? Would you rather be China? Would you rather be Brazil or India or anyone else for that matter? There’s no nation on earth I’d trade places with. The issue’s not that America isn’t great. The issue is that America has the chance to be greater. And we’re not fulfilling our potential.”

would probably win rave reviews at a debate festival, but when you are talking to working men and women who are worried about their jobs, who see the economic future of their children dwindling, who find it impossible to save enough for a secure retirement, who encounter rapacious governmental agencies at every level of governance, who are nannied to death, and you stand in front of them singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” you look like something of a clown. We can be a happy nation again. We can be an optimistic nation again. But this election is not about making things better, it is about stopping the sucking chest wound we have from killing us.

We’ve seen two presidential campaigns run by happy losers using happy talk. We’ve seen two off year elections run based on white hot anger. I know which were the most successful.

Marco Rubio really needs to wake up, look outside his Capitol Hill cloister at the challenges facing real Americans, and decide if they look happy and optimistic or pissed off and fed up. When he does that he can stop trying to feed us baby poo by telling us it is butterscotch.