How Martin O’Malley Can Beat–or at Least Weaken–Hillary Clinton
Let’s make something clear: I don’t think that Martin O’Malley–who has officially jumped into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination–will be his party’s standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, much less get elected as the 45th president of the United States. But I don’t discount for a moment his ability to weaken the very overhyped Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is a house of cards, if ever there was one. Joe Battenfeld has some good pointers for O’Malley, pointers that–if followed–can help expose the hollowness of Clinton’s campaign:
. . . Though Clinton has cruised so far without having to actually answer to the voters, she’s shown signs of weakness. A new Quinnipiac poll showed a stunning 53 percent of voters don’t trust her and more than half of independent voters don’t like her. That’s got to make Democrats nervous.
So O’Malley does have an opening, especially if Clinton continues to evade voters’ questions and hide behind private fundraisers and phony “roundtables.”
[. . .]
Get to know Iowans — from Davenport to Sioux City and every hog farm in between. The Iowa caucuses are the only place for O’Malley to become a serious contender. The liberal Democratic caucus-goers would be right at home in Cambridge. Without a surprising showing in the Hawkeye State, O’Malley won’t have a chance in New Hampshire and beyond.
[. . .]
Demand that Clinton agree to a series of debates, especially a one-on-one showdown. The media loves debate stories and will pester Clinton until she’s shamed into doing them.
The first two paragraphs of the above excerpt, along with the last one, strike me as being the most important bits of Battenfeld’s observations. At the end of the day, I think that Clinton will have too much strength and too much money to be denied the Democratic presidential nomination. But again, she is a very weak candidate, and a well-run insurgency campaign can expose and reinforce Clinton’s weaknesses–to the benefit of the eventual Republican presidential nominee.
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Originally published at pejmanyousefzadeh.net on May 30, 2015.
