Martin O'Malley tells crowd in Iowa: 'Old ideologies' and 'old names' won't move the country forward
Martin O'Malley has one message for his supporters in Iowa: "Hold strong."
During the CNN Iowa Democratic Town Hall on Monday, O'Malley fielded a few questions regarding his low poll numbers, but said he has a chance to win. "America's scanning the horizon," he said. "We cannot be this fed up with our gridlocked, dysfunctional national politics and think that a resort to old ideologies or old names is going to move us forward. I know this is a tough fight, but I've always been drawn to a tough fight."
O'Malley touted a few successes from his time as governor of Maryland, saying he restored voting rights to 52,000 people; decriminalized the possession of marijuana; and made his state the first south of the Mason-Dixon line to repeal the death penalty. He called for comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, full employment for veterans, and "common-sense wage and labor policies that make wages rise again, things we used to do, Democrats and Republicans, together all the time, like keeping the minimum wage above the poverty line, paying overtime pay for overtime work. And how about this — the long deferred promise of equal pay for equal work for men and women."
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Americans are "a great people," O'Malley said, "generous and compassionate," and reject the "fascist rhetoric you hear spewed out by Donald Trump. The enduring symbol of our country is not a barbed wire fence. It is the Statue of Liberty."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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