It begins!

"O'Malley tests 2020 waters with Iowa poll."

I am all a-twitter.

Martin O'Malley is outraged by "racist mimes."

On "State of the Union," Sunday, August 21, 2016, O'Malley criticized Donald Trump for retweeting "racist mimes."

Yes, I know he meant racist memes, but racist mimes... what a concept! I've heard criticism of people appearing in blackface, but watch out for those in whiteface.

My crazy political fantasy: What if the 2016 election were Kasich vs. O'Malley?

No pleasure and no pain. No thrills. No anxieties. Just blandness against blandness. Wouldn't it be wonderful?

How do you feel about the fantasy alternative 2016 election, Kasich vs. O'Malley?

Bad! I want at least the hope of getting something I love -- Trump!

Bad! I want at least the hope of getting something I love -- Hillary!

Blah... absurd... but I do like it better than either option we've got now.

Good! I love the insurance that nothing awful happens.

Wonderful! Let me choose between 2 normal guys who were governors.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"It's a sad commentary that Hilary Clinton's campaign sees her mistake as a failure to 'undercut' Bernie Sanders..."

"... rather than a failure to realize just how desperately many people are seeking what Bernie has to offer. She had a lot of time to get out in front of that parade."

The second-highest rated comment — with 1230 recommendations — at a NYT article by Patrick Healy titled "Clinton Campaign Underestimated Sanders Strengths, Allies Say." Excerpt:

Most Clinton advisers and allies would speak only on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess her vulnerabilities and the Clintons’ outlook on the race.... Several Clinton advisers are also regretting that they did not push for more debates.... Several Democratic leaders...  argued that Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should have competed against [Sanders] more aggressively, in debates and on the campaign trail, rather than appear so sharply negative with their recent attacks, which have given the campaign a jumbled feeling heading into the first voting states. Even Chelsea Clinton jabbed at Mr. Sanders, an unusual move given that relatives are traditionally used in campaigns to soften a politician’s image....

Some Democrats also believe Mrs. Clinton may have benefited from a more competitive primary season with big-name rivals, like Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who might have brought out the fighter in her. Only this month has she started to engage Mr. Sanders, and some of her jabs have looked sudden and anxious....

Jumbled... sudden... anxious....

Why did Democrats stand back and allow Clinton to run unopposed? She lost in 2008, so why was she entitled to this clear path they gave her? One guy, not even a Democrat, stepped into the path with her. That he's caused her so much trouble makes it obvious that she didn't deserve that deference.

I know there's another guy. I'm sure his utter irrelevance has some meaning. What gets me is the cession of the party to the Clintons. How can a party be so inert, so uninspiring? Why did Obama leave it in such a condition that it should offer up only the elderly woman who lost to him 8 years ago, offer her up as if she's so decidedly right that no one else should even compete? What deadness! Such deadness that a significantly more elderly man drops in and feels like the future. How could a party lapse into this predicament?

ADDED: The post title is a quote that I cut and pasted. The misspelling of "Hillary" appeared in the NYT. Just a commenter, though, so no reason to look down on the NYT.

Martin O'Malley: "The very last event of the night, we actually had a whopping total of one person show up..."

"... but by God, he was glad to see me. So we spent the time with him... So I wasn't surprised that he was uncommitted. But I was glad he took the time to come out in the snow to see me. We almost canceled that last event but we were out there anyway, so we plowed through."

Aw. Here's the sweet/dismal/tragic/hilarious scene:


(Via Sara Beckman.)

Let's watch the Democratic debate!

Say what you think and I'll weigh in if I think anything.

UPDATE: I guess I had no thoughts. I almost blogged O'Malley saying "L'etat c'est moi," but decided to wait for the transcript. And Sanders asked Clinton if she'd ever heard of Bill Clinton. Then Hillary said "May the force be with you," which made everyone forget everything else anyone said.

ADDED: I found the O'Malley line in the transcript: "I was the only -- one of only seven states that had a AAA bond rating."

"Presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley sits down with presidential successfuls Xavier and Rohit to talk about love, guns, and birds of prey."

Did CBS end the debate early?

Politico said: "CBS ends Democratic debate with seven minutes to spare" ("CBS brought in the second Democratic debate seven minutes under time... The candidates began their closing statements with more than 10 minutes to go until the scheduled 11 p.m. conclusion"). And various more incendiary sites said things like "Democrat debate so boring CBS ended it seven minutes early."

But I think it was planned. Look at the transcript. The moderator, John Dickerson, was doing commercial breaks like clockwork throughout the 2 hours. He even said "We've got to take a break or the machine breaks down." After that, he set up the "final segment," which wasn't "closing statements" (as Politico put it), but a focused question that precluded a canned statement: "What crisis have you experienced in your life that suggests you've been tested and can face that inevitable challenge?" When that was done, Dickerson didn't say good-night or act as though they'd ended early. He said, "All right, back with some final thoughts in a moment."

What followed was very weird, but obviously planned. With the candidates still on stage but the debate now "in the books," Dickerson brought out Major Garrett to report on the CBS "partnership with Twitter," which made it possible to identify "the most-talked-about moments for each of the three candidates." What got the most tweets?

It was Hillary Clinton, "when she defended her integrity on campaign contributions and mentioned 60% of her donors are women." I imagine there were lots of tweets of the ooh-Hillary's-mad variety or "Ouch!" Bernie Sanders's moment was "I'm not a socialist compared to Eisenhower." And Martin O'Malley's height of tweetability was also taking a shot at someone not on the stage, the phrase "immigrant bashing carnival barker Donald Trump." The candidates stood there smiling as the Major delivered the results. O'Malley, who seemed boyish throughout the debate, smirked and gave a thumbs-up. Yeah, I'd like to see him cop that attitude when Trump is there to punch back.

For some reason, CBS decided it would be cool to do a partnership-with-Twitter dance and that Major Garrett was the guy to twirl with Twitter. The candidates didn't opt to leave the stage. They put up with the absurd theater of saying who won.

And by the way, when I heard Major Garrett say that Hillary "defended her integrity on campaign contributions," my immediate outburst was "Assumes a fact not in evidence!"

Another debate, this time with only 3 — Democrats, scrambling to adjust their message, post Paris.

1. We shall see if anyone makes a big move.

2. My son John is live-blogging, here (and will probably have much more than I will).

3. Clinton is asked if the Obama administration underestimated ISIS.

4. Sanders still believes climate change is the greatest threat.

5. "Is the world too dangerous a place for a Governor who has no foreign policy experience?" (Dickerson's questions speak for themselves. There is no answer O'Malley can give.)

6. The seething, roiling backdrop is distracting me. I thought I saw the shadow of the land shark creeping up on Hillary.

7. Bernie Sanders says ISIS and al Qaeda want to take the world back "several thousand years," but that would be long before the birth of Mohammad.

8. Hillary made a point of repeatedly saying "jihadi."

9. "The business model of Wall Street is fraud." Bernie Sanders.

10. Debate over. My prediction at item #2 above is very apt.

11. John writes: "Sanders's closing statement is evocative of Larry David's impersonation of him: 'We need a political revolution! . . . Turn off the TV! . . . Please become a part of the revolution!'" When I heard him say "Turn off the TV," I thought it was going to continue: "So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'"

I was excited about another Democratic candidates debate, but then I saw it was just a "forum," that is, a series of individual interviews.

Why is that called a forum? Candidates sit for interviews all the time, so what's interesting about a sequence of interviews? That it was in an auditorium full of people rather than a closed up studio? Voices reverberated. Applause interrupted.

I sat through the whole thing, not that I wasn't reading or doing crosswords on my iPad most of the time. I figured there'd be a transcript in the morning, and I could cherry pick a few things I'd remembered. When I woke up this morning, before I went searching for the transcript — never to find one — I pushed myself to remember something from last night. Come on, Althouse, think. I thought of one thing: Bernie Sanders is annoyed by the sounds high-tech devices make. It's somewhere in here...



... along with "How many pair of underwear do I have?" and "Am I really Larry David?" (which is a reference to this, on SNL). Ah, yes, the noisy tech at 1:30. He also says "People think I'm grumpy."

Now, why did I watch all that? I do not know. I also remember that Martin O'Malley said he owns a kilt, but only because somebody gave it to him, and that Hillary Clinton regards "hush puppies" as both a food and a type of shoes. I can't believe I spent my Friday night on that, but I did go out for a late lunch...



... and I sometimes wonder if anything makes sense anymore. I can only hope that Bad Lip Reading doesn't pass up this "forum" because it's not a debate. I really do look there for meaning. Meade and I have watched the last debate on BLR dozens of times...



... Can I help you?!

"19 People Who Had The Hots For Martin O’Malley During The Democratic Debate."

A Buzzfeed collection of tweets.

Did you get the memo?

The NYT sure did.

Hillary won that debate. She met the test. The nomination is clinched. All true Democrats stand down. Accept destiny. It is won.

The Washington Post got the memo:



Now, I've got to admit... the memo is kind of correct. It's too late for Biden to jump in. Without a significant stumble by Clinton, the debate drives home how wrong it would be for Biden to step on her now. Bernie Sanders can't be President. He's a socialist! He gave a wonderful paean to socialism last night. And who were those other guys on the stage? I mean, really, who the hell were they? Other than Martin O'Malley. Gee, he looked handsome and tall, and he was really trying to register an impression. And you've got to give him credit for at least being a Democrat, which is not a distinction any of the other men on the stage seem to have. You'd think that would be a bare minimum for the Democratic nomination. We'll see if O'Malley gets any traction in the polls, now. It's unlikely. The acceptance of Hillary is jelling. So sayeth the memo.

Here's Bernie's paean to socialism (from WaPo's nicely annotated transcript), in response to Anderson Cooper's question whether a "democratic socialist" can win:

Well, we're gonna win because first, we're gonna explain what democratic socialism is. And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent -- almost -- own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have -- we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.

ADDED: CNN got the memo:

O'Malley says the Democratic Party primary process is "sort of rigged."

Because there are only 4 debates.

ADDED: Sanders was asked if he too thought it was "rigged." He said "Yes, I think so. Don’t you?"

That word "rigged" — which I originally thought too hysterical — is going to stick. It's going to hang out there, dogging Hillary and the people who closed ranks around her too early.

And what if Biden comes in? Will they change things for Biden? That would be rigged.

"Martin O'Malley is trying to catch fire in California."

Headline at the L.A. Times.

Why not? Everything else is on fire in California, and there's no water to put it out.

ADDED: "California Wildfires: Can Burning Marijuana Fields Get You High?"

High enough to get excited about Martin O'Malley?

Vox voxsplains "Why Martin O’Malley had to apologize for saying 'all lives matter.'"

I'm sure there are many answers to why, but let's start with the Vox approach.

Obviously, asking "why" contains a premise you might disagree with: O'Malley had to apologize.

But at least it's a fact that O'Malley thought he had to apologize or, strike that, apologizing was easier/better/whatever than doing anything other than apologizing.

"Hillary is outdone in first major Iowa test as Bernie Sanders calls for a 'revolution' and Martin O'Malley has some Clinton partisans on their feet – and she talks mostly about HERSELF."

The headline at The Daily Mail, covering an event that I watched live on C-SPAN last night. Meade and I were not in the same location, and he texted me that Hillary was on C-SPAN. Here's the (slightly expurgated) texting that followed:

meade: Hillary live on cspan/Now Martin Omalley

althouse: Missed h/O sounds like he's seeing the speech for the first time

meade: Same thought/The energy is waiting for Bernie/O's S's whistle/O has an impressive forehead

althouse: The i voted for you refrain worked on me

O'Malley ends his speech with a repeated line, "I voted for you," which you're asked to picture yourself saying that to your grandchildren someone who asks you who you voted for in 2016. Intellectually, I find it corny, but physically, I repeatedly got chills, even after my mind told my body to cut that out. Next up is Bernie Sanders:

meade: Bernmentum/Revolution!/I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

althouse: Angry old man

meade: White man

althouse: Not working on me/Too yell-y

meade: Plus he obviously wants to tax you more/Enough taxes will never be enough/We are coming for your wealth/You greedy person you

althouse: Going back to the Hillary part on line/Very wooden

meade: Don't stop thinking about/Socialism/Jim Webb -- token military/We need to be more like Germany

althouse: H attacks walker

meade: Jim Webb is obviously running for vice president/Webb is putting Iowa communistdemocrats to sleep

althouse: Hilary's delivery is so harsh. Not persuasive/Watching Webb now

meade: She had to compete with harsh angry old Bernie who was persuasive/Webb seems anti Obama

althouse: Wow. No applause at all/He pauses to dead silence

meade... He's bombing/Bombing Iowa

althouse: He's not really a democrat

meade: FDR gets his biggest applause

Webb ended his speech by observing that he'd finished without consuming all his time. I guess the speechwriters allowed time for the applause lines. Awkward! Then there's meeting and greeting in the crowd. (It was the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Hall of Fame dinner (whatever that is).) All the candidates were out there on the floor mingling... except Hillary:

meade: Where the hell is hill?

althouse: She stalked off as quickly as she could. Right after speech. It was weird. Her heart isn't in it. She wants to be unopposed

meade: She came back/Huma made her/But her feelings are hurt/Again/I'm starting to get depressed for Dems/Oh!/Lincoln Chafee!

ADDED: Here's C-SPAN's video of the whole 3-hour event. Scroll to the middle to get to the part with the candidates, beginning with Lincoln Chafee whom both Meade and I missed. Scroll to 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the milling around part. Bernie dominates. People crowd around him and want to meet him. The camera backs up and we see the surly Webb, getting interviewed by one reporter. The awkwardness of it is painful to watch. The camera pans around and eventually we find O'Malley and Chaffee. Lots of attention to O'Malley. I'm watching half an hour of this, seeing everyone but Hillary. But where is Hillary? Meade wrote, "She came back/Huma made her," but I never see her. What I saw — what I was referring to when I said "She stalked off as quickly as she could" — was the end of her speech, 1 hour and 50 minutes into the recording.

"I am not surprised Fox has censored Picasso’s breasts. It is absurd and creepy to blur out the bosoms of his Women of Algiers..."

"... in a report on the painting that set a new world record this week. But it is not completely impossible to understand, because if you were a puritan or a fundamentalist or just hated women’s bodies, Picasso’s breasts are the kind of breasts you might find shocking.... Picasso’s breasts are just black circles with big dots for nipples. It is a measure of his genius that he can convey all the roundness, fullness and touchability of a breast using this graffiti-like shorthand. There are four pairs of breasts in Women of Algiers (Version O) by my count – painted in various stages of cartoonish crudity... It is a cliche to see Picasso as a misogynist whose lust for women was aggressive and patriarchal... Who hates women – Picasso who painted all those breasts, or the TV station that smeared them out?"

That's from The Guardian, scoring political points off cartoonish breasts in a painting that you'd think conservatives would want to show because it was just so darned expensive this last time it was sold and even though it knows very well that it was just some local station that was afraid someone would complain. Objections could have come from lefties as well as righties. The Guardian admits, as it must, that Picasso was a big old aggressive misogynist.

Anyway, maybe it works over in England to say "Picasso's breasts," when you only want us to think of the women's breasts that he painted, but the American mind — mine, anyway — goes straight to moobs. And Picasso is a man who often posed for pictures shirtless. I went looking for a good picture to illustrate this and I found a whole page titled "A lot of pictures of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on." I picked this one:



It's been a good year for Picasso and a good year generally for shirtless men. Mitt Romney appeared shirtless the other day (in some boxing match, but who cares?, the big deal was that he was shirtless). And images of Martin O'Malley without a shirt are continually popping up as if to say look what I can do that Hillary can't.

"David Simon, the creator of the iconic Baltimore-based HBO series The Wire, lashed out in a lengthy interview against Martin O’Malley..."

"... saying in the wake of this week’s riots and curfew that the former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor was the 'stake through the heart of police procedure' in the city."

Speaking with The Marshall Project, Simon traces his wariness back to O’Malley’s time as Mayor between 1999 and 2007, when Simon says he made “mass arrests” of citizens for minor offenses to pad crime statistics. “[W]hat happened under his watch as Baltimore’s mayor was that he wanted to be governor. And at a certain point, with the crime rate high… he put no faith in real policing.”

Simon, a crime reporter at the Baltimore Sun for more than 10 years before he moved to television writing, has been an outspoken critic of O’Malley for years. He has even said that the Wire character Tommy Carcetti, an ambitious politician who manipulates crime reduction statistics, is partly based on O’Malley, a presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

Here's the whole interview. Excerpt:

"Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland and possible Democratic presidential candidate, is speaking out on the violence in Baltimore. O'Malley's rival, Hillary Clinton, is not."

Says the Weekly Standard, noting yesterday's tweets from the 2 candidates.

In fairness to Hillary, she was not the governor of the state that is having terrible trouble right now. She was not the mayor of Baltimore. O'Malley, if he is to be a plausible alternative to Hillary, needs to be able to flaunt his achievements as governor and mayor.

He's tweeting things like: "We must come together as one City to transform this moment of loss & pain into a safer & more just future for all of Baltimore's people." I wouldn't give him much credit for self-interested, anodyne statements like that. Baltimore is really hurting him. The man was mayor of Baltimore or Governor of Maryland from 1999 to just this past January. If Baltimore has big problems, he's responsible for them! His expressions of sorrow and hope for the future are fundamentally ridiculous.

Meanwhile, it might be nice if Hillary would show up and contribute something to the national political debate.

"I think you see the Scooby-Doo van if you're a Democrat and you say 'ruh roh,'" said Dana Milbank...

... on "Face the Nation" this morning. The subject was that it's a big problem for Democrats that there are no other candidates. And this was right after an interview with Martin O'Malley. Milbank's comment on O'Malley was:

[I]n that interview he was hardly challenging Hillary at all. And I think if he's going to sit there say I did good job as mayor of Baltimore, and I was a good governor, I mean he has as much chance of landing on the White House as if he's going in there in [a] gyrocopter. It's not going to happen unless he takes her on more forcefully.

And that characterization of O'Malley's interview is pretty apt. The moderator, Bob Schieffer, had tried to prompt him to take on Hillary, but look how flat that fell: