He doesn’t register much in polls of Democratic primary voters, but the former Governor of Maryland has stated interest in a presidential campaign and wants his voice heard in a primary against Hillary Clinton. His record in Maryland isn’t the most stellar but it’s not abysmal either.
Report from the Washington Post:
At a moment when everybody in Washington is talking about e-mails, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D) wants to talk about Wall Street reform. Indeed, while Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address at the State Department has created a media frenzy and overshadowed other issues, the past week brought additional news in the Democratic primary: O’Malley is almost certainly running for president. And he’s determined to make his voice heard despite some pundits dismissing his ability to mount a “credible” challenge to Clinton for the party’s nomination.
The swirl of controversy surrounding Clinton has not only called her inevitability into question but also given much of the media an excuse to focus on optics rather than policy coverage, which is just one of the reasons O’Malley’s emergence is a positive development. A contested Democratic primary will be good for the country, good for the party, good for democracy and good for driving issues that might otherwise be ignored into the election.
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I recently sat down with O’Malley to discuss his possible path to the White House. He made the case that rather than practicing the politics of “triangulation,” Democrats need to speak with clarity about what they are for. “We have to be very clear as a party about our principles,” he told me. “I think we undercut our own governing message and our own mission statement when we’re not clear-throated about the failure of trickle-down economics, how the economy is a result of political choices we make and why we need a combination of wage policies that reward work and policies to rein in reckless speculation that becomes destructive or predatory. It just undercuts our argument when we try to find the middle ground.”
O’Malley fits somewhere in between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren in terms of his views. He may well be playing for a vice presidential slot more than anything but we’ll see how strongly he ramps up a case against Hillary in the coming months if he chooses to launch a campaign.
