O'Malley says he offers a 'new generation' of ideas to Iowans.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley said Saturday the distraction surrounding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email account is creating a problem for the party by overshadowing efforts to offer fresh ideas for solving the nation's challenges.

The best way to solve that problem and change the narrative given that the probe into the Clinton email server may drag on for months would be to have candidate debates like the Republicans are doing, he said.

"I believe we should be doing that sooner rather than later and more rather than less," said the former two-term Maryland governor who also served a stint as mayor of Baltimore.

"When we fail to have debates while the other party's having debates, we're getting pushed into this corner where we're branded by questions about emails and what did Secretary Clinton know and when did she know it," O'Malley said at the conclusion of a campaign stop that drew nearly 70 people.

"I think it's a great disservice to the party that we're not already having debates, and it's a disservice to the country. We have solutions to the challenges that face our nation and we need to start talking about those solutions," he said. "It's really not what the Republicans are doing to us at this point. It's what we're doing to ourselves. We're not having debates; therefore, our messages aren't getting out there as they should." . .

O'Malley touted his record of boosting wages, improving education, banning assault weapons, repealing the death penalty and making college more affordable during his time as Maryland's governor, telling his audience "there's a big difference between the saying and the doing."

As president, he said he would support public education, promote debt-free higher education, push to make the country a 100 percent clean energy grid by 2050, invest in workers by increasing the minimum wage and promoting a living wage, strengthen financial-sector regulations and make critical investments in the nation's infrastructure.

By contrast, O'Malley said he watched the recent GOP debates and came away with the impression that "they're like the greatest hits of the '80s and '90s —doubling down on trickle-down economics; you never heard one word about expanding Social Security, not one word about how we can make college more affordable for more people. You heard a lot of denigrating things about immigrants, about women. That's not the way forward."

http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/o-malley-says-he-offers-a-new-generation-of-ideas/article_4054a849-9ee9-5899-ad18-8826315f48e0.html