James Fallows Talks With Martin O'Malley: Reform, or Pitchforks (also early oppsition to Iraq war)

[bigtree]

PE reporter Jeff Horseman was in Redlands on Tuesday, May 5 to cover a Redlands Forum event featuring former Maryland governor and prospective White House hopeful Martin O’Malley. You can read his story here and watch a video of the discussion here.

-- James Fallows of The Atlantic, who was raised in Redlands and worked as a speechwriter in the Carter White House, served as moderator. He noted O’Malley’s early opposition to the Iraq War.

“People had no idea what brokenness we were about to create, what hornet’s nest we were about to stir up,” O’Malley said.

-- His lament of the income gap aside, O’Malley struck an optimistic tone when discussing the country’s future. The 52-year-old O’Malley maintained that people under 40 tend to view immigrants favorably and accept climate change as real.

-- Here’s a link to a Washington Post blog on Tuesday’s event.

read: http://www.pe.com/articles/redlands-766671-event-tuesday.html


James Fallows: Talking With Martin O'Malley: Reform, or Pitchforks?

A few viewer's / interviewer's notes:

• This was less a casual discussion, and more a formal "please explain yourself" interrogation, than it might have been—if O'Malley's record as crime-fighting mayor of Baltimore, and his emphasis on by-the-numbers reporting of police activities along with other government actions, hadn't recently come into the center of the news. That is the topic on which we start.

• On police violence: I asked O'Malley about the seemingly nonstop stream of videos showing mainly white law enforcement officers shooting, choking to death, manhandling, or otherwise mistreating unarmed black male civilians. What was going on here? Was more of this happening? Or were we just seeing more? O'Malley's answer boiled down to: real occurrence slightly going down, visibility going way up. Which he says, despite short-term complications, is good.

• The meat of the discussion involved O'Malley's views on inequality, polarization, thwarted opportunity, and overall Second Gilded Age-ism. He was preaching to the choir, as far as my own views are concerned, but you can hear the way he develops these themes after the Baltimore discussion.

• Starting around 24:00, I remind O'Malley of a moment he might have forgotten but I never will. (And it reflects well on him.) It involves his against-the-grain real-world cautions on the eve of the Iraq war.

• For his part O'Malley was careful to make no "normal" political points and to release no personal barbs. But he had a very interesting "new day is coming" theme, about the way younger Americans are tired of feeling divided and pessimistic, are excited about living in cities and working on the environment, and generally feel better about life than their sour Baby Boomer elders. He's in a mid-generational position to make this point—some 15 years younger than Hillary Clinton, the same age as Rand Paul, 7 or 8 years older than Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz—but he makes it skillfully. The hope of moving past old division is evergreen in American politics (remember Andrew Sullivan's "Goodbye to All That" case for Obama in the Atlantic in 2007). It's central to O'Malley's argument.

read: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/talking-with-martin-omalley-reform-or-pitchforks/392633/


**watch full Redland interview with Martin O'Malley**: http://videoembed.esri.com/iframe/4522/000000/width/480/0/00:00:00

[msongs]

1. maybe he could announce his intentions. right now he is just trolling IMO nt

[bigtree]

2. maybe we could have a presidential candidate announcement day

...where they all announce at once.

Or maybe we can just accept that different people will make their decision and announce it at different times. The announcements by Hillary and Sanders are actually early, in comparison with past presidential campaigns. These contests are beginning earlier and earlier; almost a perpetual campaign for some.

O'Malley has said he'll announce his decision at the end of May. Still, I'd hardly call a former governor and mayor's commenting on the issues of the day 'trolling.' As he's my former governor, I very much appreciate his interest and input.

[FSogol]

5. Trollling? He said he'd make an announcement before the end of May. n/t

[Koinos]

3. Just a Guess.

I am guessing that he is giving himself until late May to line up funding and to wait until the Clinton and Sanders waves have subsided a bit. Being last to the "party" may give him strategic advantage. I feel a bit impatient, but the people he has selected are professionals. Lis Smith has already signaled that his campaign wants more debates. I am surprised that Sanders' campaign seemingly passed on that issue.

[bigtree]

4. good question, Koinos, on Sanders and the debates

...I'd think he'd do very well in that forum, measured against the other candidates, but I can't second-guess his campaign's thinking from here (although I can certainly speculate). I'll look for that from him in the coming weeks/months.