“Growing realization” that Dems “looking for new leadership."SFChronicle

As talk ramps up of Vice President Joe Biden entering the 2016 race following Hillary Clinton’s continued email troubles, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley — who’s also campaigning for the White House — argues that there’s a “growing realization” among Democrats that they must find “new leadership in the party.”

O’Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore, was in San Francisco last week for a series of tech events that included a session with the political action group Brigade, and a fundraiser. He sat down with the Chronicle to talk up the 2016 race.

Here’s how the conversation went with Chronicle comrade Joe Garofoli:

*On how he’s different from Hillary Clinton:

“I think I’m different from all of the candidates in our field. Not only have I made progressive promises in the past, as we all have, but I have 15 years of progressive accomplishments — whether it was passing a living wage, increasing the minimum wage, passing the Dream Act, making our public schools the best in America for five years in a row, making college more affordable for people by freezing college tuition.”
“That’s something the other candidates can’t say.”

*On the discussion of a Plan B for Democrats who once thought Clinton was inevitable:

“No. I think it’s a growing realization that people are looking for new leadership in our party. The fact that this year’s inevitable front-runner, six months out from New Hampshire would be trailing a candidate who has not even been a member of our party should tell us that people are looking for new leadership.

“When at this late stage in the game you have people actively talking about Vice President Biden or Vice President Gore entering the race I think that should tell us that perhaps maybe we should rethink this notion that the inevitable front-runner is inevitable.”

“I believe people are looking for new leadership — and they’re going to find it either in our party or the other party. WE cannot be this dissatisfied with how our national politics has succumbed to the influence of big money. We cannot be this dissatisfied with the fact that 70 percent of us are working harder but falling further behind and feel that a resort to old names is going to pull us forward. That’s not how the real world works.”

*Why are you not seeing a surge like Senator Bernie Sanders?

“Usually in our party a candidate emerges from relative obscurity that none of us had ever heard of before to become the voice of a new generation of leadership….I believe that we are poised to be that candidate once the debates start to emerge as that new voice of leadership.”

“Both parties, while looking for a new leader, are expressing their anger and frustration at established leaders. In our party, expanded, Sen. Sanders is attracting and is the vehicle for the expression of that frustration and anger. And in the Republican Party, Donald Trump is the vehicle and the expression for those dissatisfied views. But come the fall, once the debates start, people will focus in on which one of us offers the best candidacy to move our country forward as president of the United States.”

*On his statements that the Clinton’s email fiasco raises “legitimate questions:”

“I think you guys know what the legitimate questions are and she and her lawyers are capable of answering them. From my part, I’m going to stay focused on the ideas that actually serve us as a country….I would hope that as we start having debates in our party, that those ideas would drive the conversation rather than what Secretary Clinton knew and when she knew it about classified emails. I know they’re legitimate questions for all of you to ask of her but I don’t think they’re the most important questions in terms of what will move our country forward.”

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2015/08/24/martin-o-malley-growing-realization-that-dems-looking-for-new-leadership/