Eight Days Out: O’Malley aims to upset the apple cart.
'“On caucus night, you can lift me up,” O’Malley said while standing on a chair in Maquoketa. “And you can point the way forward. If we beat expectations here in Iowa, as you know, it becomes a totally different race nationally.”
And O’Malley’s right. If he does beat the odds and shows a stronger standing than his steady four of five percent in Iowa, then he may get the momentum his campaign so desperately needs. Beating those odds isn’t a long-shot either, because many of the Iowans I spoke with throughout O’Malley’s eastern swing on Saturday are strong supporters of his message, and even the ones that are not 100 percent committed are seriously considering him.
““I’m not bothered at all by the polling now,” said Dolores Lynch at a Waterloo campaign office get-together. “I don’t care about it at all. If he can stay in, we’ll be there with him. We can support him.”
Lynch and her husband, Richard, originally from Cedar Falls, said they saw O’Malley early on last summer and were hooked from the start. They commented on O’Malley’s authenticity, and the fact that “he doesn’t just say pie in the sky stuff like the others.”
At the bar in Coralville later that day, Dennis Domsic of neighboring Iowa City also pointed out O’Malley’s straight-forwardness as a selling point.
“He seems to have relevant experience, and he’s honest,” said Domsic, who remains torn between O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. “I’ll give it to him, I don’t think he’s gotten a fair shake by the main stream media. He needs more exposure.”
O’Malley has not “gotten a fair shake” by the media this entire primary season, yet he continues to campaign harder than ever. His speech in front of a crowd of Scott County Democrats on Saturday night was a mixed bag of new material bashing Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, his regular stump speech talking points, as well as more humor. O’Malley followed Clinton with about an hour in between presentations, and though his speech did not garner as many resounding standing ovations (he received five, Clinton six), his humor won over the caucus-goers.
“I look at their field of Republican candidates, and I’d like to say that Donald Trump is the most outrageous and unqualified person ever to run for the United States but that would be unfair to Ted Cruz,” said O’Malley early on in his speech to a crowd of laughs. He then advanced on Trump, calling out the Republican front-runner’s opinion of lowering or maintaining the minimum wage.
“Donald Trump has said, and I quote, ‘Wages are too high. American wages are too high.’ Well, I’ll tell you what’s too high. College tuition. That’s too high,” said O’Malley. “The cost of child care, that is too high. The number of Americans who live in poverty, that is too high. Donald Trump’s opinion of himself, that is too high.”
The room full of Democrats responded well to O’Malley’s attacks on Cruz and Trump, which Clinton failed to capitalize on as much during her time on stage. Democrats want to know that their party leaders will hit hard against the opposition, and O’Malley included his distaste for not just Trump but Cruz as well, more than he’s ever done on the campaign trail in Iowa.
“It’s sickening, mindless. Ted Cruz responded to our president’s call with a doctored photo of our president, portraying him in a Nazi-esque soldier uniform coming for American guns. No shame, Ted Cruz,” said O’Malley on the issue of gun control. “Ted Cruz actually thinks the end to gun violence is more guns. Senator, the answer to cancer is not more cancer. The answer to poverty is not more poverty. The answer to gun violence is not more guns.”
O’Malley is definitely hitting his stride in these last few days leading up to the caucus, feeding off his crowd’s enthusiasm more than usual. In the past, O’Malley sometimes pulled back into his regular remarks and even cadence of speaking, even in front of large crowds like he did a few weeks ago at the Iowa Citizens for Community Involvement - he is no longer making that mistake. In Waterloo and Coralville, two large crowds interrupted their candidate with several applauses, and O’Malley responded with a more enthusiastic and confident speech. Even in front of a smaller, more intimate crowd in Maquoketa, O’Malley outlined his principles in a more energetic and focused way. And his new approach these final few days is working.
“I was originally all in for Bernie, but now that I see O’Malley, I’m gonna really consider him,” said Mary Brady of Dubuque, who listened to O’Malley in Maquoketa. “I like O’Malley because he’s young and he has a track record of getting things done. And it’s also different when you see the candidate in person. I feel better about him now that I’ve seen him for the first time. It’s different than on the TV, you know? He’s authentic. The real deal.”
It’s these kinds of conversations that point to the notion that not everything is decided in Iowa yet. There is still time to “upset the apple cart” as O’Malley likes to remind voters, and he’s not out of his mind in saying that. Many Iowa caucus-goers are still mulling over where they will stand on February 1st, with many I talked to just seeing O’Malley for the first time (!) with now eight days to go. You can insert a plethora of cliches into the mix as the final week approaches in Iowa, but many of them are true: it is not over until it’s over. And for O’Malley, that could not be more true.
“We have nine days, Iowa - to catch fire,” said O’Malley to his supporters in Waterloo. “The sort of fire that sweeps all across this state. The sort of fire that elects a leader by beating expectations. We are on the threshold of a new American progress. Iowa, it’s Iowa’s time. And I need your help.”'
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