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Forty-nine people were killed at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, in what marks the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Marco Rubio had suffered three electoral thumpings in a row when the senator from Florida and his image-makers abruptly shifted strategy. The aspirational candidate, whose presidential campaign was built on a promise of generational change and Republican unity, would morph overnight into Donald Drumpf’s chief assailant. Rubio launched what he and his team felt was an imperative assault on the front-runner at the Houston debate on Feb. 25. The next morning at a Dallas rally, he mocked Drumpf mercilessly. Rubio whipped out his iPhone and, with boyish glee, read aloud the billionaire mogul’s misspelled tweets. He made fun of Drumpf’s makeup and “sweat mustache,” and suggested the mogul had wet his pants.

Marco Rubio’s path to the Republican nomination short of a contested convention has narrowed to nearly nothing as his campaign and allies reboot their strategy to prepare for months of guerrilla warfare to deny Donald Drumpf a clean, pre-convention victory.

No matter what happens on Super Tuesday, it’s clear who the real losers will be on election night: The Democratic and Republican parties. An election season that began as a presumptive showdown between two inevitable dynastic front-runners—Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton—has now devolved into an electoral dumpster fire. And it’s time to name the culprit: The dynasties themselves.

When Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio finished third in the Iowa caucuses, the media said he was the real winner. His campaign talked of a "3-2-1" strategy in which he'd finish second in New Hampshire and first in South Carolina. Yet he lost both states to Donald Trump, finishing fifth in New Hampshire and second in South Carolina.

It wasn't supposed to be like this: the day of the Nevada caucuses, and Marco Rubio fighting to come in second place. For months, his campaign had viewed Nevada as its firewall—the state that would deliver a win if the three states preceding it had failed to do so. As Mother Jones reported in January:

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton savored her weekend win in the Nevada caucuses as Bernie Sanders acknowledged that while his insurgent campaign has made strides, "at the end of the day ... you need delegates." He looked past Tuesday's Democratic primary in South Carolina to list Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Oklahoma as places where he has a "good shot" to do well.

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisers were certain would be played on Bush’s terms — an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below