Martin O’Malley Says He Is Optimistic About Iowa Despite Long Odds.Time
Below is an edited transcript of the interview:
TIME: How are you feeling about the race? . . .
But I thank you for keeping my expectations so low. So we need to beat expectations. The voters from Iowa have demonstrated an ability in the past to sort through the noise and lift up the new leader. That’s what they did eight years ago with President Obama and the question I hear everywhere I go, is the question of how are you going to heal the divisions in our country. Stated another way, how are you going to work with this Republican Congress. But at it’s core, it’s really how are you going to heal the divisions in our country. And what I say to people is another way to ask your questions is which of the three of us has the best chance of doing that given their history and given their record and given the nature of their candidacy. So we fight on. We’ve got to shift the dynamic. I feel like we’ve run a campaign of substance and ideas and I feel that I alone among the three of us has the executive background that would be able to build upon what President Obama has accomplished and make wages go up and do the other things we need to do. I also know that we’ve been driving this debate within the party, whether it’s comprehensive gun safety, whether it’s immigration, which they failed to ask us about in the last two debates, or climate change, which they also failed to ask us about in the last two debates. I feel like we’ve been driving these issues that are going to define our country and our party’s future.
On working with Republicans, why do you think you’re better than they are?
I think you have to look at their histories, and I think you also have to look at the tone of their candidacies. Neither one of them can really point to a record of bringing people together and bridging divides to get things done. Senator Sanders has always been a bit of a loner, God bless him, in the United States Senate, not a coalition building, and that’s what it takes to get things done. There’s a different combination of votes on every issue and a different combination of coalitions. And Secretary Clinton famously in the very first debate declared she was proudest to declare that all Republicans are her enemy. That’s not a real good way to begin a candidacy. So I don’t believe that all Republicans are our enemies and I don’t believe that all millionaire and billionaires are our enemies, anymore that I believe that American Muslims or immigrants are the cause of our problems. And in my own history, I’ve brought people together in a very divided city on one of the toughest issues there is, given the legacy of slavery, and that is public safety. And then as governor, Republican members of the Senate and the House said that they were over to the governor’s mansion to break bread more in my first year than they were in their own governor’s prior four. Marriage equality, repealing the death penalty, those things weren’t easy. They didn’t get done on the first try, but they did get done with some Republican votes. That’s what you learn as an executive, you have to pick up the phone. It’s not enough to be convinced of the soundness of your own policy choices, you have to pick up the phone and call members of both parties and particularly members of the opposite party.
That protest vote seems to be driving Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, but also Bernie Sanders. Have you been surprised by that this cycle, and doesn’t you message of compromise run counter to that frustration?
Yeah, it sure does. I’m not surprised. I would say, part of what compelled me to run was a deep awareness that we’re on the cusp of tearing each other apart as a country. That night of unrest for Baltimore, for me, I said in words that were not in the prepared remarks, that night all of us in Baltimore realized that our country is Baltimore and Baltimore is our country. So I am not surprised at how despondent to angry people are about the fact that they’re working harder and falling behind, or at best not getting ahead. I am not surprised by the sense that a majority of us have that our kids aren’t going to enjoy a life with as much opportunity, health, wealth as we have. All of that I’m aware of, but I have been somewhat surprised at the staying power of protest and that the desire to get things done has not yet welled up. Because the two resonant phrases that I heard all around the country as I listened leading up to making my own candidacy, were the phrases new leadership and getting things done. But it certainly is an unprecedented time. Our country has rarely been this divided. When the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is able so readily to boost his poll numbers and soak up media attention by making increasingly more outrageous and fascist appeals, it’s not an ordinary year.'
http://time.com/4191712/martin-omalley-iowa-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/