If the current polling is any indication, Chris Christie’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination isn’t just a failure — it’s a train wreck. Despite Christie’s national name recognition, campaign experience, and characteristically bullish debate performances, he has yet to break out of the low single digits and has somehow fared even more poorly than the dull-as-ditchwater former vice president Mike Pence, who dropped out of the race late last month.

In many ways, it’s not particularly surprising that the former New Jersey governor has failed so spectacularly to get off the ground. Donald Trump now enjoys a position of such total dominance in the Republican Party — and its presidential primary polling — that the entire race has more or less bent itself around him. Since Christie’s strategy involves trying to distinguish himself by attacking Trump directly, it was only natural the pitch would fail to resonate with a GOP electorate in which Trump remains so resoundingly popular.

Officially, Christie’s team has briefed the press that they intend to run a lean campaign that persists long enough to be the de facto anti-Trump choice come Super Tuesday. Considering the near-immediate collapse of the elite-backed and better-financed Ron DeSantis candidacy, this is hard to take seriously. If DeSantis’s exorbitantly well-funded attempt to pitch himself as a “Trump-lite” figure has flopped among a Republican electorate that prefers the real thing, it’s patently obvious that Christie’s explicitly anti-Trump message won’t get him anywhere with that electorate either.