O’Malley — a telegenic former Baltimore mayor who endorsed Clinton in her last presidential run — paints Clinton as slow to adopt progressive positions, overly cautious and poll-driven. He tells interviewers and voters in Iowa and elsewhere that he has held truly progressive views for years — and acted on them while in office.
Their latest confrontation came this week after Clinton hedged on whether she would back a massive Asia-Pacific free-trade deal that she previously supported. O’Malley quickly fired off a Twitter message and video asking viewers to “join me in opposing” the deal, which is deeply unpopular among unions and many progressives.
“Americans deserve to know where leaders stand,” O’Malley said in a clear dig at the former secretary of state. . .
So when Clinton’s campaign said that she now supports a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to same-sex marriage — which would supersede state laws — O’Malley’s team pounced. His PAC released a short video that included a clip from a recent speech in which he said that “history celebrates profiles in courage, not profiles in convenience.” . . .
O’Malley has also highlighted his support for providing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, an issue on which Clinton equivocated during her 2008 campaign. . .
After she announced her support for such licenses last week, O’Malley told reporters that he was “glad Secretary Clinton’s come around to the right positions” on same-sex marriage and driver’s licenses for immigrants.
“I believe that we are best as a party when we lead with our principles and not according to the polls,” O’Malley said. “Leadership is about making the right decision and the best decision before sometimes it becomes entirely popular.”
President Obama’s Asia-Pacific trade deal represents one of the biggest political threats for Clinton. She had enthusiastically supported the deal when she was secretary of state, allowing O’Malley to attack her from the left as inconsistent while Republicans hammer from the right.
On Wednesday, O’Malley sent an e-mail to supporters with the subject line, “Hard choice?” — a clear reference to Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices.”
“American workers whose jobs could be on the line right now are owed more than lip service,” O’Malley wrote, adding on Twitter that the pact was “a race to the bottom, a chasing of lower wages abroad, which does nothing to help our economy here at home.”
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