The Asa Hutchinson dream dies.

I have periodically poked fun at Hutchinson, and every now and then someone tells me this is mean-spirited. Politico‘s Natalie Allison spent a few days with him, and the former Arkansas governor comes across as less of a principled idealist who wants to help his country than a man addicted to campaigning for office, in desperate need of an intervention by friends:

Despite a cash crunch for the campaign, Hutchinson was set on paying the $25,000 fee earlier this fall to get a spot on the Florida primary ballot — which also included a spot on stage for an event hosted by the Florida GOP. The campaign had already let a staffer go and closed its Bentonville, Arkansas, office, according to a person with knowledge of the campaign’s operations. Ahead of the Florida event, Hutchinson’s campaign manager, Rob Burgess, stepped away from the campaign over disagreements about how — and whether — to proceed with a presidential bid. Hutchinson still decided to take the stage, where he faced intense jeering for speaking out about Trump’s legal troubles.

. . . “He’s an extremely nice guy, personally,” Dave Carney, the veteran New Hampshire Republican strategist, told me. “I just don’t know how he looks at the situation and says ‘here’s my pathway.’ There is no pathway for him.”

When I suggested to Carney that Hutchinson wants to force a conversation about the future of the Republican Party, he shot back with a less sympathetic response.

“I have a point to make too, but no one gives a f*** what I think,” Carney said. “I can go stand on my front porch and shout for an hour and no one’s going to pay attention.”

. . . Hutchinson has largely been navigating airports by himself for the last couple of months, or “with the American public,” as he put it, which he said came as a relief after eight years of having a security detail as governor. I saw him in October wandering alone around Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ fundraiser in Coralville, Iowa, passing out business cards.

These guys desperately want to believe that they are serious presidential candidates with a real shot at winning the nomination. The rest of us are not obligated to play along with these delusions, and it’s not mean to point out that they’re polling at 1 percent or less.