Martin O’Malley, a Hillary Clinton Loyalist, Is Now a Potential 2016 Alternative.
Last month, as the national media followed Hillary Rodham Clinton to Iowa, a possible challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, strummed a green guitar under a white backstage tent at Baltimore’s Patterson Park. “If you lose a verse and get brain tired, just nod to me,” Mr. O’Malley told his longtime fellow members in the rock band O’Malley’s March as they warmed up for a concert celebrating the 200th anniversary of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
A War of 1812 fanatic who had posed the day before in a re-enactor’s uniform atop a white horse, Mr. O’Malley now wore black shoes, jeans and a muscle shirt, took a swig from a tall can of Yuengling, and played a few songs on his banjo (“my retirement instrument”). The band took a break, and Mr. O’Malley signed a re-enactor’s wooden rifle, cracked open a can of Guinness and asked the co-writer of the evening’s main act, “1814! The Rock Opera,” what he did for a day job.
“I’m an editor at AARP Magazine,” David Dudley responded.
“Growing membership,” Mr. O’Malley noted.
“When you hit 50...,” Mr. Dudley began.
“I’m 51,” the governor interrupted.
“You’re in our zone!” Mr. Dudley responded, to Mr. O’Malley’s apparent chagrin.
AARP membership is something of a danger zone for an aspiring presidential candidate who talks about “big generational shifts afoot” and his connection to voters under 40. But as Mr. O’Malley campaigns for Democrats in the midterm elections and positions himself as the party’s fresh alternative to the 67-year-old Mrs. Clinton, his middle age matters much less than his failure thus far to offer something new. Unlike Elizabeth Warren, he does not stand for the economic populism that rouses the party’s base. He lacks a ceiling-cracking selling point to boost his biographical appeal and is best known in political circles as a competent, statistics-quoting wonk who tends to underwhelm on the stump.
Now, as the midterms come to a close, Mr. O’Malley will have to make clear whether he is willing to challenge Mrs. Clinton, the giant who blocks any viable path to the nomination. So far, he is reluctant to so much as nudge the woman he supported “all the way through” the 2008 Democratic primaries, publicly eschewing any criticism of her positions and privately pitching himself to donors as a Clintonian contingency plan. Instead, Mr. O’Malley contrasts himself with a safer target: the embattled president of the United States.
In an interview in his 23rd-floor office overlooking Baltimore, when asked about Mrs. Clinton’s remarks that tens of thousands of minors who crossed the southern border illegally “should be sent home,” Mr. O’Malley said, “I wasn’t really focused on her or what she was saying.” He instead criticized Mr. Obama for sending minors to “summary return to the death squads from which they fled.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/us/a-clinton-loyalist-now-a-potential-alternative.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Thought I should share this, but could live without the negative tone.
= new reply since forum marked as read
