The Problem With O’Malley’s New-Generation Pitch: Elizabeth Warren is 65 and Bernie Sanders is 73
Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley formally declared over the weekend that he will run for the Democratic presidential nomination. In his speech and a subsequent interview with ABC News, he floated several themes: He has executive experience; the presidency is not a “crown” to be passed back and forth among royal families (i.e., the Clintons and the Bushes); and unlike either Jeb or Hillary, he won’t be beholden to Wall Street.
And O’Malley, 52, is also offering a fourth argument, which seems implicitly designed to draw a contrast with the 67-year-old Clinton: It’s time for a new generation of leaders.
— Martin O’Malley tests a generational argument against Hillary Clinton, Greg Sargent, Washington Post, today
Marco Rubio is making the generational argument, too. For Rubio, it’s patently ridiculous; his fiscal and regulatory policy proposals and soundbites are circa Reagan era. O’Malley’s are decidedly 2015, which is great and is why he may (in my opinion) have an actual chance. But Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’ are even more so. And they’re 65 and 73, respectively.
It’s clearly not accurate that Warren is unpopular among young people and that Sanders likely will be. I don’t think anyone—young, middle-aged, old—cares about Warren’s age or which generation she’s part of. And though Sanders’ age is noted in virtually every news report or commentary about him, and he looks his age, is it really likely that young voters would support O’Mallley over Sanders because of their age difference? I doubt it.
O’Malley obviously is trying to target Clinton, not Sanders and certainly not Warren (whose policy positions he has adopted), with the “new generation” tack. But if it refers to age and demographic generation, it makes as much sense as Clinton’s I’m-a-woman-and-a-grandmother pitch. Which is to say, none. Clinton obviously is a woman, and everyone knows that she’s now a grandmother. Just as everyone can see that O’Malley is relatively youthful. He doesn’t need to tell anyone that. And youth is as much a policy statement as is being a woman and a grandmother. Which is to say, it’s not.
If O’Malley has a chance, it’s as a stand-in for Warren. And not because he’s younger than Warren, but because he’s running and she’s not. And Warren, 65, indeed is part of a new generation of leadership, because her ideas, her arguments, her responses to Republican rote, are part of a new generation of ideas.
My advice to O’Malley would be to kill the younger-generation-of-leaders thing and replace it with a new-generation-of-policy argument. He made a good start on that several weeks ago. Bernie Sanders is doing exactly that, but age does matter here in that he will be 75 at the time of the next election. If progressive Democrats think O’Malley would be a true stand-in for Warren and Sanders, despite his own earlier-generation New Democrat pedigree, he could pull out a victory through some combination of his own and ultimately Sanders’ delegates.
But a prerequisite, I think, is an understanding that Sanders is blazing the trail. And that Sanders, and Warren, aren’t spring chickens.
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Edited slightly for clarity and typo-correction. 6/1 at 10:16 p.m.
Gee, has he not noticed the age of the current president? New generation. Kind of old gen saying: been there, done that.
Pretty stupid approach I say.
C’mon, Daniel. Obama’s 17 months older than O’Malley. Whole different generation.
Warren is like a lot of us who went to the coffee houses in the sixties and did our thing in Vietnam and Cuba and went to the protests on either side of the of the fence.
We may be baby boomers ; but, we know how to protest and we know how to subdue a protest as many of us were there on either side. We still have the knowledge and can make a difference. This is not new stuff it is old stuff regurgitated.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
“I am not dead!”
Sorry Run and Bev you are just a “thunk” away from irrelevancy.
Or maybe that is just this old and tired and sick Peak Boomer talking. Hopefully you all still got the “know how to protest”. Me?
Not that I am ceding ground to O’Malley. If he wants to bring the energy then bring it bro. But I am not willing to just concede the race to the camp follower of “Citi-Stats”. Let him cut his way loose from the DLC and Third Way and Blairist New Labour and we can talk.
Bruce:
Who from AB went to “Showdown in Chicago?” Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? I was there and catching pneumonia at the same time. Good answers to Kai except, it is like talking to a BOT. Afrr a bit it is just time to quit as it becomes senseless.
A Brookings event today examined Raj Chetty’s work on income mobility , and Baltimore was raised repeatedly as being the armpit of the U.S. for raising your kids. O’Malley should have spent less time crooning in the bars of Fell’s Point and more time trying to help solve the dire problems of that city.
Baltimore issues will bite him during the campaign , and rightfully so. He’s toast.
Yes, Baltimore issues can and SHOULD torpedo O’Malley. Definitely his pressure to lower crime stats led to tons more bogus arrests and I have also read though I don’t know the situation first-hand so don’t know for sure that the pressure resulted in the police NOT following up on real crimes or reporting them (demoralizing decent police, who did not want to discourage citizens from reporting crimes).
Makes Clinton look good.
O’Malley can’t tie Sanders’ shoelaces.
I think Marko nails it. In addition Maryland elected a GOP governor to replace him. He may talk the talk but he gives progressive politics a bad name.
Terry, actually, Anthony Davis, the Dem gubernatorial candidate lost because he ran the same type of awful campaign that so many of the Dem. Senate candidates did last year: He refused to aggressively defend, or I guess defend at all, the big step O’Malley took late in his second term that actually was fiscal-policy liberal and gutsy. O’Malley pushed through a substantial tax hike of some sort (it might have been a state-levied property tax hike of some sort; I don’t remember) in order to significantly increase spending on education and infrastructure. O’Malley said a few days ago that, yes, the tax increase was unpopular even among Dems, but Davis failed to defend it by arguing for the need to for the spending increases the tax is supposed to pay for.
Commentators said throughout Davis’s campaign that it was terrible; really lackluster.
Well I admit I do not know what happened in Maryland and that my views are probably colored by the Wisconsin experience where a reasonably liberal/progressive governor was so unpopular by the end of his second term that Scott Walker got elected over a very decent if not inspiring Democrat Tom Barrett. Since then Walker has transformed what once was a state known for populist, progressive politics including its largest city which had socialist mayors for 40 years, into Mississippi only colder. At the end of the day I blame Jim Doyle.
Spring Texan, I read recently that back in the ’90s,Clinton was a big supporter of draconian sentences such as the Cal. three-strikes law. And some other tough-on-crime things that make me sick. I think I prefer O’Malley to Clinton on issues of this type. But neither is, well ….
as MM has actually won a few elections, and I guess you have never one won, I”m sure he will listen carefully to your advice
as to his age thing…you may not know this, but many people, including many intellignet people, don’t actually pay that much attention to politics; the few seconds on the TV news is all they hear
for such people, a stupid simple pitch works well, cause it gets out thru the media filter..but of course, you have so much practical experience in presidential primary politics, that you can offer advice