The Irish Patient

In 2015, Rolling Stone declared former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley a rising star in the Democratic Party as he set out to win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.  Almost as if on cue, a string of bad luck for O'Malley set in and continues to this day, suggesting that, when O'Malley bought some furniture from the governor's mansion in Annapolis and took it back to Baltimore upon returning to private life, he broke a full-length mirror in the process.  Do the math. 

The story so far: In April 2015, a month before O'Malley officially announced his presidential candidacy, a black man named Freddie Gray died in police custody and locals blamed O'Malley's crime policies as mayor - even though he'd left the mayor's office eight years earlier.  When he declared his candidacy, protestors jeered at him.  The pundits piled on him right away, using his name as a punch line and making fun of his poorly attended campaign appearances and his pathetic poll numbers.  They laughed him out of the campaign when he got less than 1 percent of the vote in Iowa and they laughed at his supporters in New Hampshire when they voted for him in the state primary eight days after the Iowa caucuses.  He got an early-prime slot for his speech at the 2016 Democratic convention, ensuring that few people would even see it (and was introduced as "Martin O'Malley," "not Governor Martin O'Malley," an obvious dismissal of his entire being).  Hillary Clinton's campaign sent him to campaign for her in the general election and assigned him to campaign at colleges no one had ever heard of.  When Donald Trump won, O'Malley - who'd figured all along that Hillary couldn't win - should have been vindicated for his long-shot presidential run.  Instead, he got mocked for comparing Trump supporters to Nazis and Klansmen (another thing he turned out to be right about) and for saying, when asked if he would run for President in 2020, "I just might."  

He founded the Win Back Your State political action committee to help Democratic candidates for state legislative seats and helped produce some victories in 2018.  But in 2019, he decided not to run for President again in 2020 and instead backed Beto O'Rourke, which turned to be as smart as buying stock in the Wang Laboratories computer company.  His previous backing of Rushern Baker for governor of Maryland in 2018 was a dud, as Baker lost the Democratic primary.  O'Malley's book on how to make government smarter was a non-bestseller.   He lied low during the pandemic and did nothing to promote Biden-Harris ticket until less than a week before the election, and he was passed over for Cabinet and ambassadorial posts in the Biden administration.  He did periodically appear on ABC - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the American Broadcasting Company.  Then, in 2022, with his Win Back Your State PAC having long since been terminated, O'Malley got behind his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General only to see black Marylanders compare her to Hitler and to see his wife ultimately lose the Democratic nomination for the office to his former lieutenant governor.

If O'Malley himself were in the condition his political career is in, a priest - O'Malley is Catholic - would be administering last rites now.   

But with President Biden struggling in the polls and a possible recession looming even as the Republicans continue to run roughshod over their opponents and the Democrats have no real alternatives to Biden for a 2024 presidential nominee even if Biden does not stand for a second term, there's an opportunity for O'Malley to make the biggest political comeback since Richard Nixon.  Having been out of office for the past seven years, he is a Democrat who bears no responsibility for inflation, his centrist policies on dealing with crime would help him with mainstream voters, and progressives turned off by the way he went after low-level lawbreakers in Baltimore still have his abolition of capital punishment in Maryland as governor to admire.  O'Malley's economic policies and his investment in public services as governor of Maryland won rave reviews when he was in office, and his "happy warrior" persona would jibe nicely with an electorate tired of angry warriors, be it the Squad on the left or the MAGA crowd on the right.       

What does O'Malley have to do to reinvent himself for 2024, especially after he sat out 2020 because he thought his moment as a presidential contender had passed?  Not much.  He just has to update his long-held stands on the issues to fit the post-COVID world he'd be returning to as a presidential candidate.  If he runs, people may talk about the new O'Malley . . . without ever realizing they didn't get to know the old O'Malley.

What happens next is somewhat contingent on my gambit to spur another O'Malley presidential campaign in less than three weeks, after the 2022 midterms.  What is that?  Sorry,  I still ain't sayin'. But I'll tell you this. It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. It's going to be something quite extraordinary . . . different. 😉

So strap yourselves in, and keep your Pop-Tarts ready.  Time to save the patient.