First-term Senator Marco Rubio will announce later today that he is seeking the Republican nomination for president rather than running for re-election to the U.S. Senate from Florida.

Even without hearing his stump speech, I have a feeling he will live to regret that choice.

1. Rubio is light on the experience people expect from a presidential candidate.

First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 after ten years in the Florida House, Rubio has a smaller resume than do most serious presidential contenders. Granted, Barack Obama was similarly situated when he ran for president in 2007, but he had political gifts Rubio lacks.

Several of Rubio’s likely rivals in the GOP can point to major accomplishments as governors. Rubio’s biography speaks of fighting “against the Washington establishment’s big government vision for America, standing up to ObamaCare and opposing budgets that encourage more debt at the expense of job creation and lasting prosperity.” What has he delivered on any of those fronts?

2. He is not the favorite candidate of any major GOP constituency.

Rubio’s biography plays up his underdog victory in the 2010 Florida Senate primary.

When I launched my campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2009, I was expected to lose big to my better-funded and better-known Republican primary opponent. Yet with a come-from-behind victory, the people of Florida elected me on the promise of bringing conservative ideas to the United States Senate.

Like Senator Ted Cruz, Rubio is dreaming if he thinks a presidential primary race crowded with conservatives will play out like his David vs. Goliath race against Charlie Crist. Rubio will be running for president among half a dozen others striving to fill the “tea party” or “constitutional conservative” niche. He can’t compete with Senator Rand Paul for libertarians. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is better positioned to win over social conservatives.

If Rubio opts to run as a more electable, mainstream Republican, he will face competition for that niche from former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and perhaps even former Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Back when Rubio was the “flavor of the month” for many Republicans, his attempt to thread the needle on immigration reform didn’t go well, as Nate Cohn recounts.

Mr. Rubio’s failed effort at immigration overhaul exemplifies the challenges he faces. He held 20 percent of the vote in primary polls at the beginning of 2013, but his standing collapsed along with immigration and has never recovered. His ill-fated effort may not be on the minds of most voters today, but he lost the support of many on the right. And in later renouncing his own reform effort, he lost credibility with much of the center-right. In the end, he was on the side of no one.

Exceptional candidates could overcome a tough starting position. They could carve a niche for themselves – voters from disparate factions would be drawn to their compelling message, while elites would recognize their potential appeal and even like them personally.

But the Republican Party is a deeply factionalized place, and that makes it much harder for a broadly appealing candidate to emerge. Mr. Rubio is not the obvious leader of any major faction of the party, and his message isn’t obviously oriented toward any wing of the party, either.

3. He has no stronghold in an early-voting state.

Rubio doesn’t start out in a strong position anywhere. His support registers in the mid-single digits among Republican voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and nationwide.

Plenty of candidates have risen from obscurity to win Iowa or New Hampshire, so I don’t mean to read too much into early polling. Not entering the race as the front-runner has its advantages too; for a while, targets will be on other candidates’ backs.

The smart guys at FiveThirtyEight.com have been touting Rubio as a top-tier candidate, based on models showing him in the ideological center of his party, with an “optimal” balance of conservatism and electability. Those posts would generate a great discussion in a graduate seminar on game theory. As a model for real-world Republican voting behavior, they are less convincing.

On paper, Rubio may be “not too moderate” and “not too conservative” for large numbers of Republicans. But to win primaries and caucuses, you have to become the first choice of a plurality of voters in your party. I see few signs that Rubio has the talent to pull this off–especially in Iowa, where Representative Steve King (immigration reform’s mortal enemy) is a hero to tens of thousands of caucus-goers.  

Surviving the early contests by finishing in the top three or four candidates will be a challenge in itself. Compounding Rubio’s problems, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is deploying vast resources to block him in the winner-take-all Florida primary, set for March 15. Falling short in his home state would surely be a fatal blow for Rubio’s presidential aspirations.

4. He won’t raise enough money to be competitive nationally.

Rubio has at least one billionaire in his corner, who is reportedly willing to spend $10 million supporting his campaign. But a friendly super-PAC doesn’t erase the need for substantial funds to run Rubio’s own campaign operation. He still needs to pay staff, run field operations, and control his own message through paid media.

Trouble is, Rubio won’t the the first or second choice of most country club Republicans who write large checks. He doesn’t have strong Wall Street connections. Perry has the inside track with many big donors from Texas. Bush will tap more of the Florida wealth. Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz both appear to have a larger following of diehard supporters, giving them an advantage over Rubio in small-dollar donations.

I struggle to comprehend why a 43-year-old first-term senator would embark on a presidential campaign under these circumstances. Rubio would have a solid chance to be re-elected to the Senate next year. He’s young enough to run for president in 2020, 2024, 2028, or even 2032.

In contrast, I doubt Rubio has even a 10 percent chance of winning the GOP presidential nomination. Assuming he becomes the nominee, he would face long odds against Hillary Clinton in a general election. Remember, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 with more than 60 electoral votes to spare. Rubio would need to win Florida and several other Obama states to get to 270 electoral votes.

Over at the National Review, Joel Gehrke floats a plausible hypothesis:

For Rubio, though, a White House bid is the eject button. “He’s frustrated with the fact that the Senate doesn’t do anything,” auto billionaire Norman Braman, who will provide major financial support to a super PAC supporting Rubio, tells National Review. “They don’t get anything done.”

Rubio’s frustration with the Senate, long an open secret among his colleagues, has personal and political aspects. The freshman lawmaker “feel[s] guilty” about the amount of time he spends away from his young family in Miami, as he wrote in his memoir. The job doesn’t pay particularly well relative to what Rubio could make in the private sector. Democrats have thwarted most of his major legislative efforts, and his one big attempt to reach across the aisle, the Gang of Eight immigration bill, cost him support among the same tea-party voters who had swept him into office.

[…] And while no one in Rubio’s camp is focused on it right now, an attractive plan B exists should he fail to win the White House: “If he loses, he’ll run for governor” in 2018, a Florida Republican operative predicts.

A losing presidential campaign would make Rubio less attractive as a gubernatorial candidate, but then, Floridians have elected Rick Scott governor twice. Almost anyone looks good compared to him.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers? Is Rubio wise to “go big or go home,” or is he making the biggest political mistake of his life?