It now seems clear that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is gaining support, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is rapidly losing support in the Republican Presidential race.
Rubio always has called Bush his “mentor”, as Rubio entered the Florida legislature during the tenure of Jeb Bush as Governor of the “Sunshine” State.
Also, Rubio is almost a full generation younger than Bush, born 18 years after Bush.
Bush, more than ever, is seen as representing the past, the Bush Dynasty, and has been out of office since the end of 2006.
Rubio is one of the youngest Senators, and has been in office since the new century began, and is portraying himself as the “new generation” of leadership, the kind of appeal that John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama used as a pitch when they ran for President on the Democratic Party side.
The Democrats now have a problem, if Marco Rubio is able to become the Republican Presidential nominee, as their three leading candidates—Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden, if he enters the race–will be 69 to 75 at the beginning of their term of office, making them 24 to 30 years older than the Florida Senator.
Generally, the nation goes for the younger candidate for President, with the exception in modern times of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Martin O’Malley, former Governor of Maryland, represents the “younger generation” in the Democratic Party, but has not “taken off” at all, a perplexing situation, and again, a problem for the Democratic Party as it enters the 2016 Presidential competition.