The Sanders Surge

Ed Schultz reported on his show last night that U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont seeking the Democratic presidential nomination for 2016, is drawing many crowds and doing so well in the polls that he could give Hillary Clinton a scare, if not make the race truly competitive.  I thought Sanders was going to be a protest candidate at best.  After all, septuagenarian Jewish liberals from the second-least-populous state in the Union are not elected President.  But then, we said the same things about young black politicians with foreign-sounding, spell-checker-unfriendly names back in 2008.   

Meanwhile, Martin O'Malley is so low in the polls, he can't even get arrested. Which is ironic, since he became somewhat infamous for getting lots of people arrested back when he was mayor of Baltimore.  I'll reserve my comments about that for another time, but I will say right now that I have seen one poll, and it doesn't look promising for O'Malley - he's at two percent, behind Joe Biden at eight percent.  You gotta be doing really badly if you're six points behind someone who isn't even running!  And don't look for O'Malley on Ed Schultz's show, as Schultz is an unabashed Bernie-backer.

Don'r get me wrong, I'm still for Marty.  But if Bernie Sanders should somehow win the Democratic presidential nomination, I'll have no trouble supporting him in November 2016.  And O'Malley?  Well, Democrats like underdogs, and with his poll numbers, some primary voters will probably love him.