Oh, Governor O'Malley, your words are so beautiful

By Richard K. Barry

Hello, central casting? We need someone to
play a presidential candidate.

Though former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley hasn't made a decision about whether he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination, he's out and about talking like a candidate. This week he was in Iowa.

“For 30 years we’ve followed this trickle-down theory of economics that said, ‘Concentrate wealth at the very top, remove regulation and keep wages low so we can be competitive – whatever the hell that means,” O’Malley says.

“What it led to was the first time since the Second World War where wages have actually declined, rather than going up – where almost all of the new income earned in this recovery has gone to the top 1%,” he says, invoking the famous phrase from the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he continues, arguing, “these things are not effects that blew in on a gulf stream or on a polar vortex – these are the products of the policy choices we made over these 30 years.”

O’Malley says the system is rigged “in many ways” – a concern pressed by the “Elizabeth Warren wing” of the Democratic Party – and contends middle class priorities should be “at the center of our economic theory.”

The crazy thing is that in American politics talk like that makes you a lefty radical, instead of what it should it make you, which is a person who understands reality.