Super Duper Tuesday is Done

Super Tuesday came and went and left some debris in the way of badly battered, but still in it, and shredded and gone away candidates.  Here are the winners and losers from super duper Tuesday.

And the Winners are…

The Democratic front runner, Hillary Clinton walked away winning Florida by a huge margin, expanding her commanding delegate lead. Her decisive win in Ohio may well have put the nomination out of reach for Sen. Bernie Sanders. And even her speech last night was focused more on Donald Trump than on her rival. 

Ohio Governor John Kasich needed to win his state in order to continue, and that he did. By doing so he denied Trump racking up another win and ever increasing number of  delegates.  After all hasn’t Kasich become the last bastion of hope for the GOP establishment.  Now Kasich will stay in the race, but for a candidate who didn’t win anything outside of his home state, it is difficult to see him being a factor for the nomination.  That is on less it becomes a contested or brokered nomination at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

Businessman and GOP front runner Donald Trump got big wins in Florida and Illinois, and North Carolina. He lost Ohio to Kasich, but so what, it was expected. The Republican race is now centered around the question of whether or not the party can deny Trump enough delegates to clinch the nomination outright.  But this train will be tough to derail.

The losers…

Sen. Bernie Sanders woke up today thinking super Tuesday may have been the night where his dream of becoming the Democratic nominee was put out of reach. He was stumped by Hillary Clinton in Ohio, a state he had hoped to win. The African American folks are just not with him, and that’s the bottom line.

Sen. Ted Cruz just keeps on shuging along. Trailing Trump in the delegate count, but staying put in the remote case of a hail Mary win at the convention. Cruz keeps positioning himself as the only candidate who can beat Trump, but there is a very good possibility that nobody believes him. 

Another one bites the dust…

Sen. Marco Rubio is done.  He threw in the towel immediately after the double digit crushing defeat in his own state of Florida. The question remains wether this darling of the GOP establishment rides off into the Florida sunset? After all, he was the candidate that the establishment of the Republican Party picked to save them after Jeb Bush failed miserably. Ironically, Rubio may have given his best speech of his entire campaign as he was suspending his campaign. Rubio’s speech made it clear that he despises Donald Trump and the type of campaign that he is running. On the same day that it was reported that top conservatives were gathering to investigate the possibility of a third party conservative run if Trump is the Republican nominee, Rubio used his speech to define his meaning of conservatism.