wondered what there is to vote for. They voted for President Obama but are disillusioned that he has not been able to change a lot due to the Rs. They are hearing things that really have them paying attention now.

I also like the words he says, although I have to admit I'm a little put off by his formal speaking style, which to me sounds a bit overdramatic and contrived. I've only heard him speak once - the announcement of his candidacy, so maybe I'm making an unfair generalization. In the video posted here, he sounds pretty cool and relaxed.

It's early days yet, so no commitment is required, but I'm happy to see we are going to have a couple of alternatives to Her Royal Inevitableness.

From considering him....

That was a disaster of epic proportions, and bred hate, distrust and untold violence....

The husband likes him, I read anout him earlier, many on the right dislike him because of his tax laws that according to some had people moving out of Maryland in droves, it could be a redeeming quality but it does not balance out....

...but 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

Interesting that the people of Baltimore City (mostly African American) reelected him to a second term as mayor with 87% of the vote. Many citizens -- black and white -- were happy to see drug dealers off the street corners and away from their front yards. And the violent crime rate and murder rate did really go down. Life in Baltimore before he took office was "difficult." O'Malley ran and was elected mayor on a platform of reducing crime. Mistakes were made, but he did his best in an impossible situation.

When I think of O'Malley's job as mayor, I think of the challenge faced by a teacher in a classroom filled with disruptive students. If you hand out too many referrals, you get criticized by the administration for acting unfairly. If you hand out too few referrals, the students walk all over you. Reducing crime in the City of Baltimore during that period was like teaching a classroom in hell. And yet, O'Malley personally visited some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in order to understand what was going on.

I think that a lot of teachers in the Baltimore City schools would leap at the chance to change places with teachers in Burlington, Vermont. It is easy for a teacher to succeed in a well-behaved classroom (with no fear of assault, I might add). Being mayor of Baltimore is not a challenge that O'Malley ran from. I give him points for courage for taking on the impossible. He is doing it again in this primary, where he is well behind the other candidates in the polls.

O'Malley's second term as mayor ended in 2007. He can't be held responsible for everything that happened during his tenure or -- even more so -- that has happened since then. Nor can he be held responsible for the nationwide wave of police violence against African Americans that we are all witnessing at this time. If anything, poverty, unemployment, and outsourcing of good jobs (such as Black and Decker from Baltimore) has done more to provoke violence and counter-violence than any one public official could.

...is inclusiveness, a rejection of a generational divide.

40 who wants to scapegoat immigrants. I have also rarely met anyone under 40 who hates gay people or gay couples.”

Well said, Governor. I think under 40's are pretty open minded and realistic about most things from immigration to climate change to gay rights to civil rights to openness to the rest of the world. Some of us "over 40's" are too ( ) but not to the same extent that younger folks are.

Sorry, but they were AWOL in the last mid-term election. There will be a demographic shift before our eyes over the next few elections though. We'll see if anyone can actually get people to the polls.

To me, the new American voter will mostly NOT be white males. They will likely be female, and maybe most will have an immigration story.

Of course college students will show up to a rally on a college campus. By contrast, when Carter visited my college campus in the 70's, it was insane. The students, protesters, and minority community all came out (and later elected him). Carter left the auditorium which was too small, stood on the steps outside, and used a bullhorn until someone produced a rock band system with big speakers.

Democrats need to recapture the energy that we had in the 70's. I thought Obama would do it, and he was close on the campaign. As President he has been more reserved to me.