Marco Rubio may be a bumbling excuse for a US senator, but when it comes to Florida politics, he’s no fool. A career politician and failed presidential contender, Rubio is campaigning this year for a third term as Florida’s senior senator. And he’s running scared.

Claiming that he’s up against “a Democratic Party that’s been captured by the far left and Marxist misfits,” Rubio made an anguished appearance on Fox News on the day of Florida’s primaries to plead for campaign money. Rubio faced no threat on the Republican side of Tuesday’s ballot. Nor, it turned out, did challenger Val Demings on the Democratic side.

Demings, the former Orlando police chief and current member of the US House who did a star turn as a key prosecutor during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, won the Democratic Senate primary with 84 percent of the vote. She carried all but two of Florida’s 67 counties in a contest with an influential lawyer who was a former majority whip for the Democratic Caucus in the state House of Representatives.