So, who is Martin O’Malley, and what are the chances of his being the next President of the United States? He is the former Governor of Maryland, and not as bad as you might think.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the two main parties have exactly equal chances of winning the election. With one overwhelming front runner on the Democratic side and about twenty candidates, none of whom is clearly established as front-runner, on the Republican side, it should be perfectly obvious that Hillary Clinton has a much stronger chance than anyone else. A 90% of winning the Democratic nomination equates to a 45% chance of becoming president. No-one else comes close.
But what was that about a 90% chance of her winning the nomination? Doesn’t that leave a 10% chance of it being someone else? Sure it does. Hillary Clinton would be almost as old taking office as Eisenhower was on leaving it; as old as George H W Bush was when he handed over to her husband; and a similar age to Ronald Reagan at his election. She seems in perfectly good health, but it is not wise for a party to have only one candidate in the race, even if that candidate is young and vigorous. She is also surrounded by scandal. One day, some of it may stick.
One of the silliest memes about the current president is that we are “one email away from impeachment” over Benghazi. It is silly not because it is necessarily untrue, but we are always one email away from impeachment – depending on the content of the email. An email could emerge that could implicate Obama, Clinton, or indeed almost anyone else, in a scandal.
It is surprisingly late in the cycle for a new candidate to emerge. Only a handful of Republicans have officially declared, but many others have been laying the groundwork for months or even years. It would be hard for a Democrat to enter the race from a standing start and compete, even with a weakened Clinton. If her candidacy completely fell apart this month – if health or scandal caused her to withdraw – others would enter the race, but only those able to race a billion dollars in a year: Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Rahm Emanuel, and that might be it.
But what if Clinton’s candidacy was to collapse next year, when it was maybe too late to even register for the ballot in some early states? The obvious beneficiary would be the only other candidate who seems to be in the race, Martin O’Malley. He is not running for Vice-President, or some other office, as candidates sometimes do. The Clintons are notoriously vindictive. Opposing Clinton means that they will blacklist him. He may be putting down a marker for a future run, but is likely to be beaten so badly that his marker will be obliterated. No, he is in this race because he thinks there is a non-trivial chance that the Clinton bandwagon will spectacularly derail leaving only one candidate in the race – Martin O’Malley.
With two, three or four top tier candidates in the race, his chances would be negligible, but if all the hopes of his party have been bet on one candidate there is always a chance the bet will go sour.
Quentin Langley is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bedfordshire Business School as well as a freelance columnist published in the UK and all parts of the US. He blogs on social media and crisis communications at brandjacknews.com
Filed under: U.S. Politics
