...advocating such 'centrist' ideas like protecting the environment, making college affordable, and achieving universal health care.

...and the effort at that time was to replace Bush and capture as broad a coalition as possible to win the WH. That effort actually resulted in the election of a 'centrist' candidate who brought O'Malley's choice at the time into his WH as SoS.

That's a decade ago and a world away from the political landscape we face today. O'Malley has made his position clear and is putting his progressive positions, policy, and achievements at the forefront of his campaign.

not not really date specific, you could replace Bush with whatever and you have typical DLC type speak.

Also, the challenges of 2008 are not the challenges of 2012. Clinton is no longer the last Democratic president to win reelection. The country has been moving left since the disastrous Bush years. The party's model (because of or spurred on by Warren) is now to move left.

Still, 2008 is not 2015.

We've had a couple decades of Democrats chasing the center.

...that record proves your premise false.

and has been for decades.

Nobody ever got elected by ignoring the center. Like them or not, there are quite a lot of centrists out there who vote in elections.

I say it's around five or six percent.

O'Malley was the most progressive Governor in the country. He's been praised by environmental groups, Latino groups, education groups for his progressive accomplishments.

This is a short summary of what he accomplished as Governor:
1. Raised Minimum Wage
2. Froze tuition rates at public universities
3. Expanded pre-K
4. Increased funding for education
5. Signed DREAM Act giving undocumented Americans living in Maryland in-state tuition rates
6. Granted undocumented Americans living in Maryland driver's licenses
7. Worked with faith groups and social service groups to provide in-home foster care for child refugees from Central America. Maryland took in the most refugees per capita thanks to O'Malley.
8. Ordered Baltimore jail to no longer hold undocumented Americans with no criminal charges until ICE arrived to deport them
9. Signed Same-Sex Marriage into law and campaigned all over the state for voters to vote yes to keep SSM legal
10. Repealed death penalty and commuted the remaining death row prisoners to life in prison

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. He has more progressive accomplishments than either Hillary or Sanders.

But I repeat myself.

...so labeling him a 'politician' is a meaningless tag, as if his opponents haven't been in politics for several decades.

politicians, whether they be Obama, or Clinton, or O'Malley, etc. Doesn't seem to make much sense to condemn them as being hypocritical flip-floppers or to contort ourselves to come up with principled reasons for pretty standard pol behavior.

"Well, the party's base has moved to the left and now I'm running for President" is pretty much the standard explanation for evolution on the part of O'Malley and Clinton.

...and no amount of rhetoric from you can alter that fact.

he can try and pretend all of this is just due to economics and not do the culture of law enforcement in Baltimore, but that's going to be a tough sell

...you can try and pretend it's an open question, but his progressive accomplishments are record and reality.

Really, no legitimate question as to whether zero tolerance/stop and frisk policing harm police/community relations?

...for the killing of Freddie Gray, which was the subject of the protests.

It's a dubious claim that his mayoral tenure which ended in 2007 has ANYTHING to do with the police department today or has influenced youth in the streets today who were small children when he was in office.

In fact, police killings actually went down during his administration, along with killings in Baltimore overall which saw a SHARP decrease. He makes a correct case that his 'policing' policies, in totality, actually helped SAVE lives in that city.

The record is much more complex than the policy of zero-tolerance arrests.


from David Freedlander at Daily Beast:

From 2000 to 2010, the incidence of crime in Baltimore dropped 43 percent, outpacing by a stretch the 11 percent drop that the nation saw during that period. The crime rate dropped by 40 percent. Graduation rates rose. Median home prices doubled. A new biotech park was built on the city’s east side. A new performing arts center was built on the west side. O’Malley was obsessed with numbers and metrics, and set up a 311 call center to track citizen complaints. A program called Project 5000 enlisted volunteer attorneys to help deal with the city’s massive vacant home problem as titles to those homes was eventually transferred to individuals and nonprofits for redevelopment. The school system was pulled back from the fiscal brink. CitiStat, designed to track crime, helped bring the crime rate down and created a budget surplus of $54 million that was then reinvested in schools and programs for children. At last, the population stabilized. It was no longer necessary to flee, if you could. The number of college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds living within three miles of downtown Baltimore increased 92 percent in the 10 years after O’Malley became mayor, fourth among the nation’s 51st-largest metro areas.

Time magazine named O’Malley one of the five best big-city mayors in America. Esquire named him the best young mayor in America. CitiStat won Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in American Government Award.”

To be sure, change was both too fast and too slow. The blight and poverty remained. And although crime dropped, O’Malley’s zero tolerance policing policy created a backlash in the very communities it was designed to protect. But those policies were not as unpopular as the rioting now in the streets of Baltimore would suggest.

“I don’t recall O’Malley stating that he would do something about ‘black crime,’ just crime,” wrote liberal Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodericks toward the end of O’Malley’s time in City Hall. “Coming out of the long, dreary Schmoke years, Baltimoreans appreciated O’Malley’s almost singular focus, along with millions in increased funding dedicated to drug treatment for the city’s thousands of addicts who contribute, directly and indirectly, to 80 percent of crime.”

“He was trying to stop the crime on the streets. People were getting killed daily on Old York Road and in Park Heights,” Robert Nowlin, a Baltimore community activist, told The Daily Beast. “He did something a lot of these mayors don’t do: He walked with the small people. A lot of these mayors stay in the affluent areas. He walked the streets...”

...Tying O’Malley to Baltimore is an old political saw. When he tried to run for governor of Maryland, Republicans ran ads with flashing police lights, talked about how O’Malley would do for Baltimore what he did for Maryland. O’Malley won statewide twice though, boosted by those same Baltimore neighborhoods that he is now blamed for turning into powder kegs...


read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/06/you-have-martin-o-malley-all-wrong.html

I don't think Geek is saying O'Malley is a bad guy, just that he's a career politician like Hillary, Barack, and Joe, et cetera...

O'Malley's a good guy, but trying to elevate him as some kind of sainted alternative to Clinton are going to be less than persuasive.

His record as governor of Maryland is a strong argument. Sound bytes about crowns is just politics as usual.

If he moves to Florida or some such state we probably never hear from him.

...

I don't want to disillusion O'Malley's followers but Sanders sucked all the air out of the Anybody But Clinton movement. If they were cars Hillary would be an Accord, O'Malley would be a Camry, and Bernie would be a Chevy Volt...If you can get the Accord for $5,000.00 less than the Camry you will probably buy the Accord.

He waited too long.

The fact that his announcement got overshadowed by Dennis Hastert, who retired from public life in 2007, is not a very good sign.

He's caught in a vise--if he argues against Clinton as being too third way and corporatist, the response is "okay, if that's the criteria, why shouldn't I vote for Bernie?"

If he argues against Sanders as not electable or having mainstream mojo, then the response is "okay, if that's the criteria, why shouldn't I vote for Hillary?"

Seems like a Chris Dodd/Bill Richardson kind of candidacy.

IMHO, in the unlikely event Hillary stumbled Biden would get in the race, the party would rally around him, and the president would put his considerably heavy thumb on the scale. Throw in the fact that Joe is a tremendously sympathetic figure right now.

Example that comes to mind is Mondale losing to (ugh!!!) rat-faced weashole Norm Coleman after Paul Wellstone died.

Two things I would point out.


Joe is a lot more relevant now than Mondale was then and the exploitation of the Wellstone funeral by the MSM didn't help.

This will remain idle speculation, of course.

Maybe that says more about Pat Caddell.

But there is a huge difference between being pragmatic and being unprincipled. Conviction politicians don't fare very well at the national level. It's easier to be a conviction politician in a homogeneous state or a congressional district because the small size or the sameness of the constituents makes it easier for your constituents convictions to match yours.

www.ontheissues.org

https://martinomalley.com/bio/record/

you can compare each of their records. They also plot their records on a graph, and they have Bernie farthest to the left, with Hillary between Bernie and O'Malley.

But off the top of my head, O'Malley's record on crime (while mayor) was anything but progressive, and he never tried to portray himself that way.

...his support of the repeal of the death penalty and his commuting the sentences of those on death row; his community policing program; his public review board for the police department; CitiStat, designed to track crime, helped bring the crime rate down and created a budget surplus of $54 million that was then reinvested in schools and programs for children and was recognized with the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in American Government Award.”

"community policing program."

His zero tolerance policy was anything but progressive, and hurt non-white residents the hardest.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/30/politics/2016-election-martin-omalley-baltimore/

Plenty of residents give him credit for economic development and a sharp drop in crime. But others -- particularly nonwhite residents -- remain upset about O'Malley's zero tolerance policing strategy that they believe fueled discrimination. These law enforcement tactics, critics say, resulted in police officers aggressively pursuing individuals for minor offenses and even taking innocent bystanders into custody.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish

The drug war began it, certainly, but the stake through the heart of police procedure in Baltimore was MARTIN O’MALLEY. He destroyed police work in some real respects. Whatever was left of it when he took over the police department, if there were two bricks together that were the suggestion of an edifice that you could have called meaningful police work, he found a way to pull them apart. Everyone thinks I’ve got a hard-on for Marty because we battled over “The Wire,” whether it was bad for the city, whether we’d be filming it in Baltimore. But it’s been years, and I mean, that’s over. I shook hands with him on the train last year and we buried it. And, hey, if he's the Democratic nominee, I’m going to end up voting for him. It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights. But to be honest, what 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 and with his promises of a reduced crime rate on the line, he put no faith in real policing.

SNIP

How? There were two initiatives. First, the department began sweeping the streets of the inner city, taking bodies on ridiculous humbles, mass arrests, sending thousands of people to city jail, hundreds every night, thousands in a month. They actually had police supervisors stationed with printed forms at the city jail – forms that said, essentially, you can go home now if you sign away any liability the city has for false arrest, or you can not sign the form and spend the weekend in jail until you see a court commissioner. And tens of thousands of people signed that form.

My own crew members [on “The Wire”] used to get picked up trying to come from the set at night. We’d wrap at like one in the morning, and we’d be in the middle of East Baltimore and they’d start to drive home, they’d get pulled over. My first assistant director — Anthony Hemingway — ended up at city jail. No charge. Driving while black, and then trying to explain that he had every right to be where he was, and he ended up on EAGER STREET4. Charges were non-existent, or were dismissed en masse. Martin O’Malley’s logic was pretty basic: If we clear the streets, they’ll stop shooting at each other. We’ll lower the murder rate because there will be no one on the corners.

Eager Street is the location of the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center. The jail was embroiled in a widespread corruption scandal that resulted in dozens of inmates and corrections officers convicted on federal charges. It has also been under a federal civil rights investigation for more than a decade over its use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders.The city eventually got sued by the ACLU and had to settle, but O’Malley defends the wholesale denigration of black civil rights to this day. Never mind what it did to your jury pool: now every single person of color in Baltimore knows the police will lie — and that's your jury pool for when you really need them for when you have, say, a felony murder case. But what it taught the police department was that they could go a step beyond the manufactured probable cause, and the drug-free zones and the humbles – the targeting of suspects through less-than-constitutional procedure. Now, the mass arrests made clear, we can lock up anybody, we don't have to figure out who's committing crimes, we don't have to investigate anything, we just gather all the bodies — everybody goes to jail. And yet people were scared enough of crime in those years that O’Malley had his supporters for this policy, council members and community leaders who thought, They’re all just thugs.

SNIP

...and was not as unpopular in the communities which were subjected to the criminal behavior and record killings as the playwright of the fictional television program has suggested.

I posted a good article above on the totality of the crime problem Baltimore faced and the totality of the approach to that intolerable situation (for those who lived there and were subjected to it). Those communities voted in overwhelming numbers for Martin O'Malley in each and every one of his elections.

It is right there in the piece you posted.

but that doesn't mean progressives should overlook his poor record on dealing with the police and crime.

He won his elections with great support from the African American community.

That's a poor approach, though it did succeed in lowering the crime rate.

...which included his community policing program; his public review board for the police department, including the creation of a 311# for complaints; and, most effective, CitiStat, designed to track crime, which helped bring the crime rate down. Police shootings went down, as well as a dramatic reduction in overall killings; something which you can blithely dismiss, but something which resulted in hundreds of Baltimore residents' lives saved.

It's amazing how you can speak about the zero-tolerance policy in isolation of other facts involved in the mayor's approach to the worst crime statistics (record killings) in the nation at the time in Baltimore. Criticizing that policy in isolation of other facts gives you zero credibility on the issue.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish

The drug war began it, certainly, but the stake through the heart of police procedure in Baltimore was MARTIN O’MALLEY. He destroyed police work in some real respects. Whatever was left of it when he took over the police department, if there were two bricks together that were the suggestion of an edifice that you could have called meaningful police work, he found a way to pull them apart. Everyone thinks I’ve got a hard-on for Marty because we battled over “The Wire,” whether it was bad for the city, whether we’d be filming it in Baltimore. But it’s been years, and I mean, that’s over. I shook hands with him on the train last year and we buried it. And, hey, if he's the Democratic nominee, I’m going to end up voting for him. It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights. But to be honest, what 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 and with his promises of a reduced crime rate on the line, he put no faith in real policing.

SNIP

How? There were two initiatives. First, the department began sweeping the streets of the inner city, taking bodies on ridiculous humbles, mass arrests, sending thousands of people to city jail, hundreds every night, thousands in a month. They actually had police supervisors stationed with printed forms at the city jail – forms that said, essentially, you can go home now if you sign away any liability the city has for false arrest, or you can not sign the form and spend the weekend in jail until you see a court commissioner. And tens of thousands of people signed that form.

My own crew members used to get picked up trying to come from the set at night. We’d wrap at like one in the morning, and we’d be in the middle of East Baltimore and they’d start to drive home, they’d get pulled over. My first assistant director — Anthony Hemingway — ended up at city jail. No charge. Driving while black, and then trying to explain that he had every right to be where he was, and he ended up on EAGER STREET4. Charges were non-existent, or were dismissed en masse. Martin O’Malley’s logic was pretty basic: If we clear the streets, they’ll stop shooting at each other. We’ll lower the murder rate because there will be no one on the corners.

Eager Street is the location of the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center. The jail was embroiled in a widespread corruption scandal that resulted in dozens of inmates and corrections officers convicted on federal charges. It has also been under a federal civil rights investigation for more than a decade over its use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders.The city eventually got sued by the ACLU and had to settle, but O’Malley defends the wholesale denigration of black civil rights to this day. Never mind what it did to your jury pool: now every single person of color in Baltimore knows the police will lie — and that's your jury pool for when you really need them for when you have, say, a felony murder case. But what it taught the police department was that they could go a step beyond the manufactured probable cause, and the drug-free zones and the humbles – the targeting of suspects through less-than-constitutional procedure. Now, the mass arrests made clear, we can lock up anybody, we don't have to figure out who's committing crimes, we don't have to investigate anything, we just gather all the bodies — everybody goes to jail. And yet people were scared enough of crime in those years that O’Malley had his supporters for this policy, council members and community leaders who thought, They’re all just thugs.

...like his fictional portrayal of Martin O'Malley in his television drama.

I gave you my view. Take it or leave it.

He did NOT say he'd be voting for him in the primary.

a source. Next time you are on that website, look at their "about us" page. You'll see a lot of political parties represented, Constitution law Party, Green Party, Tea, Party, GOP, etc, but there is one noticeable omission. Care to guess which party isn't represented?
Another clue is to look at their press accolades. World Nut Daily shows up, do any liberal sources? Lastly, look at the bogus graph. Why are libertarians represent as a quarter of the graph? you can find examples of Democratic, Republican, and authoritarian govts around the world, do the libertarians really have any non-hellhole examples that they can be proud of?

I am supporting Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses. If he can't clinch it I will throw my support to Webb or Chafee. I would actually rank Hillary above someone like Harold Ford Jr.

I trust him about as much as I trust Clinton which is nil. Wall Street hedged their bets in 2008 with two Third Way Democrats. Most of us didn't know that Obama was one of them. I consider O'Malley to be the same. A stealth, Third Way candidate. Just Google Martin O'Malley, DLC, Third Way Democrat. There's a wealth of information out there going way back to confirm his DLC and Clinton associations. Fool me once...

...and rely on cliched criticisms like just saying 'DLC' and 'Clinton' and pretending that means more than real policy which benefited the lives of real people where I live.

and broken windows policing policies. Those are both centrist policies. Besides, where the dlc is most toxic is on issues governors don't deal with like banking, and foreign policy.

He's already making neocon sounding statements on the patriot act. The wall street stuff won't be revealed till after he is elected as it was with Obama.

Last edited Mon Jun 1, 2015, 08:10 PM - Edit history (1)

...and name-dropping the 'DLC' in the next instance is a bogus extension of your argument. Stick to the actual facts about his record.

I really don't think you're prepared to do more on O'Malley than throw up meaningless rhetoric, so, I'm done participating in this train wreck of a baiting thread.

Senator Barack Obama & 'Herald' Ford Jr. campaigning for Ford's 2006 Senate campaign

oh wait...

Obama don't shine him at all and that is no slight on Obama he is but flesh and blood no one alive would turn the trick for me on that truest of Turd Wayers.

I at least gotta have the thumbs way up from the force ghosts of Carl Sagan, George Carlin, Fredrick Douglass, Karl Marx, Abe Lincoln, Einstein, Martin Luther King, King Solomon, Ceaser Chavez, Confusius, Socrates, and Eleanor Roosevelt requiring no disenting votes or a night and day 1,000 foot letters of fire, Saul on the Road to Damascus level of sustained turnaround to even consider the possibility of submitting the paperwork for reconsideration on that turd.

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