When all is said and done in the 2016 election, historians may well look back at South Carolina as a make-or-break moment for Jeb Bush, a once jaunty technocrat laid low by reality-television star Donald Trump and betrayed by his android protégé Marco Rubio. As Saturday’s primary looms, insiders say his hopes of staying in the race will hinge on him coming in no less than third place, an unlikely outcome for a candidate currently barely holding on to fourth.

Bush’s own campaign adviser, Michael Steel, did little to counter the rising tide of gloom surrounding the former Florida governor, repeatedly dodging questions Friday on CNN’s New Day as to whether Jeb would drop out should he perform poorly in the state. “Look, we’re looking forward to a great result here in South Carolina,” he said, pointing to the Bush campaign’s ground game in the Super Tuesday states. “Right now, we’re focused on a good result here in South Carolina and showing people that Governor Bush has the heart and the spine to be the next president of the United States.” Pressed by host Chris Cuomo to actually answer the question, Steel repeated the same line, in various iterations, three more times.

Donors loyal to the Bush family have waited anxiously for him to drop out, giving them the green light to support another, more electable candidate. But Jeb, buoyed by a massive war chest of super-PAC money, has hung morosely on, deploying his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, and brother, former president George W. Bush, in South Carolina, where the dynasty has longstanding ties. Still, speculation has swirled that a disappointing performance in the Palmetto State should mark the end for Jeb’s low-energy campaign.

Bush himself seems to have reached new depths of existential wretchedness in the past several days. “I hope you don’t think the end is near,” he implored a crowd in Rock Hill, South Carolina, according to The New York Times. “We don’t have to go vote, I guess. It’s all finished,” he said at another self-defeating rally. “I should just stop campaigning, maybe, huh?”