Taken For Granite

Martin O'Malley has been making the rounds in New Hampshire - ostensibly to rev up Democrats for the 2018 midterm elections and campaign for and support local Democratic candidates, but of course New Hampshire is the home of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.  O'Malley refuses to speculate on a possible 2020 presidential bid, saying he still has to think along and hard before he decides on that.  And possibly pray as well - he was educated by Jesuits, remember.

The good news is that people aren't making fun of O'Malley anymore.  His recent engagements up in the Granite State actually got some good notices, and two New Hampshire talk-radio hosts complimented him for his articulate, direct speaking style.  (Note: The quality of your speaking style is inverslye proportional to your ability to win votes.)   The bad news is that many people still regard O'Malley as an afterthought, largely because he was only able to compete in one state (Iowa) in 2016 as a presidential candidate and the voters there wasted no time in telling him to get the hell off the stage. Pundits and late-night comedians go out of their way not to mention him in talking about 2020.  They'll say the next Democratic presidential candidate should be another black guy, like Eric Holder or Cory Booker, or perhaps a woman, preferably Kamala Harris, who being a half-black, half-South Asian woman married to a white man, is Jesse Jackson's entire Rainbow Coalition, her own balanced ticket.  Or they look to the Kennedys - look, Bobby's grandson Joe is a rising star!  Or Kirsten Gillibrand, who holds the Senate seat once held by Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton (though the Kirsten for President craze has cooled somewhat).  Or maybe Hillary again!  They're even encouraging 76-year-old Bernie Sanders to run again because, well, he's the most popular politician in the country and because aging Baby Boomers who suddenly won't trust anyone under 60 are just as suddenly saying that age doesn't matter.  Bill Maher has been hoping for another Sanders run, insisting that older people have a lot to contribute.  The 62-year-old Maher has said that if Sanders doesn't run, there'll be no one else, unless Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown's likely successor as governor of California, should decide to run for President after only two years as governor.  And that other geezer, Joe Biden, is being taken seriously at the age of 75.                

And if all else fails . . . there's always Oprah.

O'Malley has been ignored in large part because of what pundits seem to perceive as a nerdy, pollyanna-ish approach to public service on his part that's more out of 1960 than 2020.  (In New Hampshire last week, O'Malley even got upstaged by Ohio governor John Kasich, seen as a possible GOP primary challenger to Trump in 2020.)  Also, there's O'Malley's insistence that the Republicans are the Democrats' opponents rather than their enemies (hardly the best way to win over bloodthirsty Democratic partisans, especially Hillary partisans already offended by O'Malley's mere existence), and also his low popularity among blacks, a linchpin of the Democratic base.  And yet it's Michael Steele, the nation's most prominent black Republican, who has been among the first to suggest that O'Malley might be a major presidential contender for 2020.  When he suggested this to Chuck Todd on MSNBC, Todd, known for cavalierly dismissing people, suggested that Steele, who is from Maryland, was biased toward a fellow Marylander.  But Steele quickly schooled Todd on how O'Malley has been making a lot of "interesting noise" in politics (I assume he meant O'Malley's Win Back Your State PAC) and reminded Chuckles the Clown that O'Malley is very good at retail politics and with hand-to-hand campaigning.

Todd found that he couldn't argue with that.

I maintain that O'Malley will run, and once he throws his hat in to the ring, there will be some difficult days for him as he moves forward, given all of the people who still expect little if anything from him.  But if and when he gains traction out of first Iowa and then New Hampshire, you can expect more people to take Martin Joseph O'Malley very seriously.

And then we break out the Pop-Tarts.

O'Malley made a speech at a New Hampshire event last week, and it's online.  I'll comment on that once I get the chance to actually watch it.