Martin O'Malley: It's a Tough Slog

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s is currently pulling two percent of the vote among Democrats in the latest poll. He’s so far behind Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, their dust settles by the time he catches up.

While Obama seems like he’s talking to himself at times, in O’Malley’s case it’s true. At his campaign rally in Iowa two weeks ago, no one showed up!

Well, one guy did show up. And he and O’Malley talked for a while. But at the end, the guy still wouldn’t say who he would support.

Yeah, turning out the vote is very scientific these days. Someone told O’Malley that to win the Democrat nomination, he should appeal to the party’s base. So, he’s coming out strong for gun control. Real strong. Gun bans, background checks, you know the drill. Last weekend, in Iowa, he said gun shows are “the easiest place” for a terrorist to get “a combat assault weapon.” Oddly, however, he said this in the parking lot at a gun show.

Where O’Malley comes from, they call that “not hitting on all cylinders,” or “one brick short of a full stack.” But that’s nothing. People at the gun show felt sorry for O’Malley and asked him if he wanted to come inside. It was 18 degrees in Cedar Rapids that day. But O’Malley preferred to stand out in the snow to offer more anti-gun rhetoric and political grandstanding.

Everybody knows you can’t get elected president these days without some publicity. You need a big newspaper, like the New York Times, to say you have vision. The other day, O’Malley got an endorsement from Rolling Stone, because, after all, O’Malley plays the guitar.  We won’t hold our breath waiting from the “bump” from this endorsement.

Yeah, O’Malley is having a hard slog. Just last week, someone asked Vice-President Joe Biden about the Democratic party presidential race and commented, “We’ve got two good candidates.”

Maybe things would be looking up for O’Malley, if he hadn’t said, on national TV, that the enemy he’s most proud of is the increasingly popular NRA. Or maybe if he hadn’t mischaracterized gun shows (at a gun show), knowing that the federal government reports (p. 13) that less than one percent of criminals imprisoned for gun crimes acquire guns at shows. Or possibly if he didn’t ignore the fact that most terrorists and other mass shooters buy guns from gun stores after passing a background check.  The list seems to go on and on.

A hard slog, indeed.  But one well earned.