Bill Nelson deserved better from the people of Florida

[Algernon Moncrieff]

31. You say I'm wrong, but yet Scott is in the Senate and DeSantis is in the Governor's Mansion.

The Republicans have won the Governorship 4 straight times

The outgoing Republican Governor knocked off a three-term Senator (this rarely happens, regardless of party), and did so in a year in which that outgoing governor is taking a lot of heat for the water management policies that exacerbated the Red Tide.

We picked up a whopping two Congressional districts, and one was via the retirement of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who (by Republican standards) is pretty moderate (not that I'm not happy for Donna Shalala). And while I'm thrilled Mucarsel-Powell squeaked by Curbelo, it was by less than a point in an election with the President's popularity running consistently around 40% nationally.

Bottom line, Florida is like a good college football team in a very good conference...ending up with one frustrating tight loss after another. Anyone who knows anything about power ratings knows that teams like that can maintain very high power ratings despite the won/loss record, and are hardly a lost cause.

If a college team squeaks by 12 opponents, but wins every game by a point, then they are an undefeated team. They will go to a bowl game or a playoff. If a college team loses close games by 1 point to 12 opponents, the team is 0-12, and most likely the coach gets fired. There are no "good losses." We aren't 0-12 in Florida, and they aren't 12-0, but they consistently win key races.They hold both Senate seats; they hold the Governor's Mansion; and despite picking up two seats, they still hold a majority of the Congressional districts in Florida. I'd point out that we picked up no seats in districts Trump won - even where he won by a small margin.

And I've yet to see a standard bearer emerge in Florida. We've seen a string of failures (in no particular order and for no particular race) - Buddy Dyer, Bette Castor, Alex Sink, Bill McBride, Kendrick Meek, and now Gillum. Who is going to challenge DeSantis? Who is going to challenge Marco Rubio? Right now, I'm not seeing it. Sorry.