Just ten days ago, President Obama was one of several speakers at the White House Correspondents Dinner to deliver a casual slight to Martin O'Malley's not-yet-official 2016 presidential aspirations, based on the premise that no one had ever heard of him. Obama's joke was that Hillary Clinton had started off her campaign by going unrecognized at a Chipotle—and Martin O'Malley had gone unrecognized at a Martin O'Malley campaign event. Hardee har!

[The unmentioned "meta" aspect of the joke is that most presidential candidates necessarily go through the humiliating "You're running for what???" stage of campaigning, notably including the ultimately nominated-and-elected Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.]

It's a joke no one would make about O'Malley now. Protests over Freddie Gray's death were spreading in Baltimore even as the black-tie dinner took place 40 miles away in northwest Washington. Martin O'Malley—for eight years a Baltimore city council member, for seven years its mayor, for eight years until this January the governor of Maryland—came back to his city from an overseas trip, walked the streets, received both congratulations and criticism, and generally found himself at the center of the intersecting debates about inequality, opportunity, justice, and accountability that will certainly play a large role in the American politics of the next 18 months and the American realities of the era ahead.