IT IS a question that nags at Democrats who know that the long road to the White House is littered with the remains of front-runners who failed to finish: if not Hillary Clinton, then who?
Step forward Martin O’Malley, the two-term governor of the state of Maryland and former mayor of Baltimore, whose biggest – indeed only – claim to national fame is that he was the inspiration for Tommy Carcetti, the fictional crime-busting mayor in the HBO series The Wire.
Flashing a Carcetti-like smile, Mr O’Malley was out in the bellwether state of New Hampshire last week, plugging his record of creating jobs in Maryland and cleaning up Baltimore, the port city that became notorious for its runaway drug and crime problems in the late 1990s.
“We had allowed our city to become the most violent, the most addicted and the most abandoned city in America. And against that backdrop, I decided to try. I ran for mayor,” Mr O’Malley told an audience of business and political insiders at a breakfast in the small town of Bedford.
Most Americans have never even heard of Mr O’Malley – he currently polls at just 1.2 per cent in the Democrat nomination race, compared to nearly 60 per cent for Mrs Clinton – but, come November, when the presidential race gets under way, he dreams that they might.
Mrs Clinton appears invincible but the recent travails over her use of a private email account while she was secretary of state have offered a sharp reminder of her vulnerability as a sometimes grouchy campaigner who has little sympathy in the media.
“History is full of times when the front-runner is inevitable,” Mr O’Malley says when asked about why he is even bothering to campaign, given his near-zero poll ratings, “right up until he or she is no longer inevitable.”
In essence, if Mrs Clinton stumbles or drops out with a health problem or because of a major scandal, then Mr O’Malley will be waiting in the wings, ready and prepared to take the understudy’s call.
If only by default, the spotlight is beginning to fall on 52-year-old Mr O’Malley’s youthful, tanned features since a cursory assessment of the other potential Democrat runners shows he has precious little competition for the role.
With Mrs Clinton expected to declare later this month, time is running out for would- be challengers to mount a campaign. The only other recognisable Democrat figures – Joe Biden, the current vice president, and Elizabeth Warren, the high-profile bankerbashing senator from Massachusetts, who both poll at around 12 per cent – show no signs of laying down the infrastructure needed for a run.
Which brings everyone back to Mr O’Malley and the growing likelihood that whatever happens next year he will almost certainly get his day in the sun – or as one pro-Clinton Democrat strategist acidly observed, “in the deep shade” of Mrs Clinton’s campaign.
Mr O’Malley may not be prepared to go so quietly, warning in a recent interview that the presidency “is not some crown to be passed between two families” – words that were taken as a clear jab at Mrs Clinton.
And out on the stump, Mr O’Malley says he hears the voters calling over and over for the same two things: they want “someone who can get things done” and “new leadership” – two qualities, he does not need to add, that do not apply to Mrs Clinton as well as they do to him.
So while Democrats on the Left would dearly like Mrs Warren to run, they may yet rally behind Mr O’Malley, whose speech ticked all the Left-wing boxes: more collective bargaining, corporate restraint, living wages and an enthusiastic welcome for immigrants. “The enduring symbol of our country is not the barbed-wire fence, but the Statue of Liberty,” he said, adding that “gay rights are human rights” and that it was time to “cast aside the failed, worn out, trickle-down policies” of the past.
The New Hampshire audience was sympathetic, but it is fair to say that in person Mr O’Malley does nothing to shake off his reputation – earned when his one outing on a national stage at the 2012 Democratic Convention was widely panned – as a political performer who struggles to excite a crowd.
He does play the guitar, and once jammed with the Irish folk band The Saw Doctors, but his YouTube library shows him strumming woodenly along with none of the edginess that candidate Bill Clinton once brought to his saxophone playing.
Supporters of Mr O’Malley point out that his apparent lack of charisma hasn’t stopped him winning every election he has ever contested, bar one.
Democrat strategist Sean Curran argues that given the exposure of a national campaign, the O’Malley brand can appeal to young people who want to move on from the divisive politics Mrs Clinton represents.
Mr O’Malley can but dream, but if that outside opportunity comes, there are those like Mr Curran who believe that he will not fluff the chance.
“He’s good on the stump, good in debates, well-prepared and he can handle himself,” he said, “Hillary’s going to get a lot more from him than she bargained for.”