Democratic race could still ‘turn on a dime,’ O’Malley insists after latest debate.
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who at times seemed like a third wheel in Saturday night’s Democratic debate, put the best face on his prospects during during a town hall meeting here Sunday.
“How many of you saw the debate last night?” an upbeat O’Malley asked close to 50 people sitting in chairs encircling him on the dance floor of an American Legion post, where a disco ball, snowflake decorations and Christmas lights hung overhead.
“Well, my sense — and you guys know this better, because you are residents of New Hampshire, where every individual voter matters — is that the decision-making window is just starting to open up here,” he said. “And people, once the holidays pass, are going to zero in on the choices they have, and in the Democratic Party it would be an extreme poverty indeed if we only had two people to choose from. And so I’m glad to be able to offer my candidacy.”
O’Malley has remained mired in the low single digits in New Hampshire, the one state where most recent polls have showed Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) with a modest lead over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner nationally.
“I’ve seen these elections turn on a dime, and so will ours,” O’Malley assured his supporters as he wrapped up a little more than half an hour of questions and answers, before shaking hands and posing for selfies. The event was billed as the candidate's latest stop on a “New Leadership Town Hall Series.”
Later, O’Malley sought to make the case to reporters that he is more likely to prevail against a Republican in a general election than is Clinton or Sanders.
“Our country is going through a very, very divided time, a very polarized time in our national politics,” O’Malley said. “We’re not going to find common ground and pull people together by declaring that all Republicans are our enemies, as Hillary Clinton did, or by trying to replace capitalism with socialism, as Senator Sanders as advocated for most of his life. … We need a leader who will pull us together and not a leader who will drive us apart.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/20/democratic-race-could-still-turn-on-a-dime-omalley-insists-after-latest-debate/