Last night's debate should serve as the final, desperate, gasp in Jeb Bush's campaign

Jeb Bush has been languishing near the bottom of the polls for a while now, and if the rumors are to be believed his donors are getting extremely nervous. Since his lackluster announcement, he's failed to generate momentum and has been eclipsed by personalities both more bombastic and more subdued than his own. He desperately needs to create some excitement if he's going to continue.

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....And he can't do it. If you're looking back to the disastrous McCain campaign for inspiration, you know you've got some serious issues. So, most assumed he would use last night's debate to try and build ...anything that would reverse his fortunes. Unfortunately for the four or five people who were really hoping Jeb would be their next President, it didn't happen. To be clear, he tried to do it. He came in to the debate with a few pre-planned attack lines that some consultant probably thought would help him score a few points. Specifically, he decided to target Marco Rubio's voting record (and the "I hate my job" rumors) by calling on Rubio to resign. It did not go well... "When you signed up for this, this is a six-year term," Jeb said. "You should be showing up to term. Literally, the senate, is it a French work week? You get three days to show up. Just resign and let somebody else take the job. There are a lot of people who are living paycheck to paycheck in Florida."

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Rubio's response may just have been the final nail in Jeb's campaign. Ouch. Jeb has three big problems here. The first is that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had uglier voting records when they were running for President. The only way Jeb's attack will gain any traction is if the mainstream media picks it up and runs with it. They won't do that when their two patron saints are worse by comparison. The second is that Jeb's donors realize what a weak move Jeb's attack was. As the Politico reports:

Bush donors were furious about his debate tactics. "Going after Rubio that way was just a mistake," said one of Bush's donors. "No one cares about missed f--king votes in the Senate. Washington cares about that. The media cares about that. And losing candidates care about that. Jeb sounded like he was losing. And Marco made him pay."

The third, and probably the worst, is that this was the best Jeb could do. He had all the time in the world to prepare an attack. He had a team of speechwriters and strategists backing him up. He has the entire Bush political machine behind him. ...And the best he could do was a crack about senatorial truancy that blew up in his face? This is politics, so I suppose it's conceivable there's still a move Jeb could make that would turn things around. However, it's become darn near impossible to imagine what that might be. Barring a miracle, Jeb is all but finished.

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