O’Malley: Lack of Dem debates is a ‘huge mistake’
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley blasted his party’s national committee for a limited debate schedule that will include only one debate in New Hampshire before the primary.
“We are making a huge mistake,” O’Malley said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show. “If we tell the people of New Hampshire we have become such an impoverished party that we can only afford one debate before the New Hampshire primary, what the hell kind of Democratic party is this?”
The DNC sanctioned six primary debates — the first will take place Oct. 13 in Nevada and the lone Granite State debate is set for Dec. 19 in Manchester.
The Republicans have a dozen debates scheduled, including one in New Hampshire in February days before the primary.
Their first debate took place last Thursday in Ohio, drawing a whopping 24 million viewers on Fox News, and the GOP has two more contests set before the first Democratic debate on the docket.
“I think having more debates would force the candidates to take positions in issues,” O’Malley said, noting that front-runner Hillary Clinton has not taken a firm stance on Wall Street reform. “This is how you evaluate candidates and see how they think on their feet, interact with each other and answer the tough questions.”
The former Maryland governor is trailing badly in the polls, averaging less than 2 percent, a distant fourth behind Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden, who has not said whether he’ll run for the White House.
O’Malley said his lack of national name recognition has been a challenge and that having more debates would be one way to raise his profile and get his positions on issues out to the voters.
“Debates are a time-honored way in which citizens are able to see candidates on stage in a competitive and sometimes pressing and adversarial relationship with one another,” he said. “I think we can all agree the people of New Hampshire deserve more than one debate.”
O’Malley also responded to criticism he has received from the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that he has put forth a plan to revamp criminal justice in the United States.
“We laid out in that policy the path to saving and redeeming more lives,” he said. “We have two big problems in our nation. One is we bury far too many people from violence and gun violence, and the other is that we incarcerate too many people, especially in the federal system, for nonviolent crimes.”