Martin O'Malley: On Hillary's 'bobbing and weaving'

BALTIMORE — Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley hasn't managed to score significant inroads against front-runner Hillary Clinton, but he argues that rising polls for Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders prove that the 2016 contest is wide open — even for himself.

In an interview with Capital Download on Wednesday, O'Malley described the first Democratic debate Oct. 13 in Las Vegas as his opening to show that.

"Because the American people have not been allowed yet to hear from the Democratic presidential candidates, they are gravitating to whoever appears to be the best alternative to this year's inevitable front-runner," he told USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series at his bare-bones campaign headquarters, across the street from Baltimore's Penn Station. "For this summer of anger and discontent, nothing quite says repudiate the Democratic establishment quite like supporting a Socialist candidate."

That's a reference to Sanders, the Vermont senator who describes himself as a Democratic socialist. In a nationwide Bloomberg News poll released Wednesday, Clinton was at 33% among likely Democratic voters. Biden, who hasn't yet announced whether he'll get in the race, was at 25% and Sanders was at 24%. O'Malley trailed far behind at 1%.

But the former Baltimore mayor and two-term Maryland governor said he wasn't discouraged by his low poll standing. Instead, he was encouraged by Clinton's "continuing descent" and by what he described as growing crowds in Iowa, which holds the opening presidential contest.

O'Malley, a devout Catholic, planned to head to Washington later in the day to attend the canonization Mass celebrated by Pope Francis at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He has been studying the pope's encyclical on climate change, a 192-page paper released in June that urges a stronger partnership between science and religion to address the environmental crisis.

"I have been reading that encyclical a little bit every morning about our common home, the Earth," he said. "And I think the pope's language is so open and so inclusive and so truthful that I believe it's going to be a big part of what we need in order to inspire a new consensus, to forge a new desire to take action against climate change."

So far, legislative proposals to deal with climate change have been caught in a partisan stalemate, including a debate over to what degree human activity has contributed to it.

On one environmental issue, the Keystone XL pipeline, O'Malley mocked Clinton for declaring her opposition only this week. "God bless her heart," he said with a bit of an edge. "There's a big difference between leadership and following the polls. I was against the Keystone pipeline and came out against it nearly a year ago. Secretary Clinton has only now come out against it after bobbing and weaving and giving non-answers for most of this campaign. That's not leadership."

He also disputed Clinton's contention that voters don't care about the controversy over her exclusive use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of State. The Washington Post on Wednesday reported that the State Department account disputes her explanation of how its inquiry began.

"I think voters care very much about a number of issues and certainly they care about this issue," O'Malley said. "The bigger issues out there are how we get our country moving in the right direction, but that requires people to have a certain amount of trust and be able to rely on the word of their leaders. And I think this issue has hurt Secretary Clinton's campaign — and I believe it's not over."