Reality Punches Chris Christie In The Face

Politico reports Chris Christie's 2016 campaign for president is fading into darkness:

Chris Christie, the voluble New Jersey governor, is once again facing the possibility that he might be relegated to the junior varsity debate — and rival Republican campaigns and outside observers say his window to re-enter the top tier of presidential candidates is closing fast.

Wednesday night’s scene in New Hampshire showed the daunting challenge ahead of Christie. As CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC covered Trump’s first town hall live — breaking only to run clips of Jeb Bush attacking the real estate tycoon — Christie was gasping for air on C-SPAN. Because the governor’s dimly lit event — a town hall at a restaurant outside of Manchester — was outdoors, the few viewers watching saw the candidate gradually disappear into darkness. The next day’s headlines duly focused on the Jeb-Donald contretemps, ignoring Christie’s play for a state he has made central to his fading White House hopes.

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Christie has become such an also-ran that the Associated Press and the New York Times recently reassigned reporters dedicated to covering Christie — Jill Colvin and Kate Zernike — to other beats.

Then there are the polls.

If current trends hold, the New Jersey governor will likely lose his spot in the primetime CNN/Reagan Library debate on Sept. 16, displaced by a surging Carly Fiorina. As of mid-day Thursday, Christie was in 11th place among GOP presidential contenders in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls — behind Trump, Bush, Ben Carson, Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Fiorina, Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. John Kasich, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

On Tuesday, a new CNN/ORC poll found Christie in 11th place, with only 3 percent support among registered GOP voters. (A separate POLITICO analysis of the five most recent national polls that would factor into who would appear for the main debate finds Christie tied with Kasich for 10th place. For now.)

And with Trump owning the Straight Talk vote, said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, there’s little Christie can do to claw his way back.

Christie tried punching teachers in the face rhetorically a little while back, but that didn't help him regain any campaign momentum.

 

He's tried sharing too much information about himself (Hey, I've used birth control!), but that only freaked people out. 

Perhaps if this was an ordinary year, Christie's bluster could create one of those video moments that would go viral and get his campaign back on track.

But that's almost impossible to do with Donald Trump trolling the race, as Kean notes in the Politico piece.

 

He's got a campaign infrastructure and some money to burn, but the cash will start to dry up soon enough as donors move to other more viable candidates (it's already starting to happen) and his campaign apparatus won't save him if he starts running low money.

Christie's big on wanting to punch other people in the face, at least rhetorically.

Well, reality's punching back.

A 2016 victory, a longshot for Christie ever since BridgeGate, now seems all but impossible.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.