Martin O’Malley is back already—and being overshadowed again. On Wednesday, Politico broke the news that his leadership PAC commissioned a poll in Iowa to gauge his chances in a run for the White House in 2020. The survey showed O’Malley, a very distant third in last year’s Democratic primary, leading a field of potential candidates at 18 percent. “Gov. O’Malley spent a lot of time in Iowa during the campaign and made a very favorable impression on Iowa Democrats,” Dave Hamrick, O’Malley’s 2016 campaign manager, told Politico. “We wanted to see if the conversations he started with Iowans resonated and are glad to learn that they did.”

But that polling is less impressive in context. Despite spending an enormous amount of time in the first-in-the-nation caucus state while running for president, he’s only a point ahead of New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. The Philly Voice considered Booker’s showing to be the real news here: “2020 poll shows promise for potential Cory Booker presidential run.”



This poll does not seem great. He's only beating Booker by 1% after campaigning in the state all of 2015/2016 https://t.co/P12RQqoWTD pic.twitter.com/TQ3slrkEjo — andrew kaczynski 🤔 (@KFILE) March 15, 2017

The poll also didn’t include potential populist contenders like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders, whose progressive political revolution captivated the left during the 2016 campaign.

now we know who the 3 Democratic frontrunners in Iowa are! https://t.co/foH6CCpunt @gdebenedetti pic.twitter.com/fWblixRwUV — Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) March 15, 2017

Martin O'Malley is willing to pay his own way to be taken seriously in a presidential poll, if that's the only way https://t.co/sVZVNNq80D — Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) March 15, 2017

Such snark is to be expected. Despite an impressive progressive record as Maryland’s governor, O’Malley’s presidential campaign generated no enthusiasm. In the most memorable of election cycles, he was a forgettable footnote, the odd man out in the battle between Hillary Clinton and Sanders. He dropped out after earning less than one percent in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus, a result that many saw coming from the moment he entered the race.



“In another campaign year,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman wrote on the day he announced his campaign, “Martin O’Malley’s résumé and good looks might be irresistible to Democratic primary voters. He is a former big-city mayor whose story of renewal in Baltimore seemed well tailored to an increasingly urban and minority party. He is a former two-term governor of Maryland—and the lead singer and guitarist in a rock ’n’ roll band. But Mr. O’Malley is running in an election cycle in which Democratic elected officials and donors have overwhelmingly focused attention on Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he already faces competition from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for the support of liberals who dislike Mrs. Clinton or merely want to see her pushed further to the left.”