It’s hard to exaggerate what a debacle Tuesday night was for the senator from Florida. It was fine to come in third in Iowa’s caucuses when he saw a late surge and was running against 11 other people. It is not fine to come in third in Idaho in a field of four candidates. It is not fine to win 16 percent of the vote there, when you need 20 percent to qualify for any delegates. It is not fine at all to come in fourth — dead last in the current field — in both Mississippi and Michigan, qualifying for delegates in neither.

This was once a three-man delegate race, with Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) jockeying a bit behind Trump. Rubio will pick up a couple of delegates in Hawaii, but on Tuesday overall, Kasich, the governor of Ohio, gained ground on the onetime establishment front-runner.

So now Rubio’s campaign is spending the day doing two things. One, it is brashly predicting that it will win Florida. Second, it is insisting that it will still exist by the time of that vote next Tuesday.