Defiant Martin O'Malley insists he won't play Iowa kingmaker.

[elleng]

'Martin O’Malley may get soundly defeated by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders here on Monday, but he won’t be a pawn in their game.

O’Malley, a chipper long-shot who has been driving his own car when his volunteers get too groggy, is rejecting his role as an Iowa caucus kingmaker— telling his supporters here they don’t have to vote for either Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders if he’s excluded from the final round of voting Monday night.

The former Maryland governor — in distant third place with between three and five percent of the vote her, according to recent polls — could, under quirky caucus rules, decide a too-close-to-call contest between Clinton and Sanders if he instructs his precinct captains to throw his support to either one of them.

But he won’t — unlike previous caucus also-rans.

“The people who have stuck with me, the friends that I have… I think they are pretty resolute in their support for me,” he said during POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast, which will be released Monday morning.

When I asked him if he was encouraging his backers to stick with him for the duration of the caucus, he said, “Yes,” adding, “My message to them is to hold strong.”

O’Malley needs to reach a 15 percent threshold of support in most precincts needed to make it to the second round of caucus voting — and he is likely to fall short in most of the state’s 1,600 caucus sites.

But O’Malley, tired but defiant as he paused between events on Sunday, said “many” of his backers have told him, “I’m caucusing for you and if we are not viable, I’m going home… This is a democratic process, people make their own free choices, but it’s my sense… there’s not a whole lot of enthusiasm going into the second for the other two.”

Both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have been waging a quiet guerrilla war to woo O’Malley voters — and the Clinton campaign has gone so far to issues a smartphone app to field organizers who are hunting for potential O’Malley defectors, according to a report from BuzzFeed News.

O’Malley conceded that Clinton and Sanders would pick up some of his supporters, but he said that he was likely to poach more than a few Clintonites at college campus caucus sites where he and Sanders were the most popular candidates.

“It’s very possible that on college campuses we actually outperform Secretary Clinton and are neck and neck with Sanders.”

In the weeks leading up the caucus, most pollsters and analysts predicted that O’Malley’s voters — reflecting any anybody-but-Hillary mood on the party’s left — would jump en masse to Sanders. But Saturday’s Des Moines Register/Bloomberg showed both candidates deadlocked at around 25 percent among O’Malley voters who would vote in an O’Malley-less second round.'

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/martin-omalley-iowa-caucuses-sanders-clinton-218486#ixzz3yrAG1alH

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I have a lot of respect for O'Malley, and his stand just increases it.

I look forward to voting enthusiastically for him in some future presidential contest.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Speaking purely from a partisan political stance... good.

Given the smartphone app thing, I'd rather see her unable to use O'Malley as a pawn.

[Jefferson23]

3. He has every right and best of luck to him. n/t

[Skwmom]

4. Oh, please. He wants Clinton to throw delegates his way with his ap.

But I guess you have to do something to try to appear as non-establishment.

[Nanjeanne]

5. Good for him

It's one thing to try to sway caucus-goers to your side by presenting your case. That's the politics of caucuses.

It's quite another to pretend to be a part of a candidate's group simply to do no harm to your chosen candidate and hurt their closest opponent's chances. That may be a part of what happens - but it sure is a stain on small "d" democracy.

Good for O'Malley fighting for his place in this race.

[99Forever]

6. A solid ethical man, always.

Good for him.

[artislife]

7. Hey, it is only the first caucus, there is still time

For him to do something surprising. Good for him, I guess you could say he's a fighter!

[AtomicKitten]

8. The Clinton smartphone app is to block Sanders from getting O'M supporters if 15% isn't reached.

Clinton Iowa Volunteers Train When To Push Backers To O’Malley — To Block Bernie
“Sad and telling,” says Sanders campaign. There’s an app for that.
link: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/hillary-bernie-math#.tjqmWJbY0

Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president is instructing its Iowa caucus leaders to — in certain cases — throw support to former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, with the goal blocking her main opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, from securing additional delegates.

The tactical move is rooted in the complex math of the Iowa caucuses Monday night, where the campaign is looking to defeat Sanders in a state whose caucus-goers have historically backed progressive challengers.

A precinct captain, Jerome Lehtola, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the campaign has trained precinct captains to release supporters to O’Malley if the move can make him “viable” without hurting Clinton. A Clinton aide said the campaign has trained more than 4,000 volunteer precinct captains to handle a host of different scenarios, including ones where caucus-goers are released to or recruited from another camp.

“Our precinct leadership teams have worked hard to get to know as many people in their precincts as possible and they’ll use those relationships to maximize Hillary Clinton’s delegate count depending on which groups are viable on caucus night,” the aide said.

The goal, in the caucuses’ complex terms, is to cost Clinton no delegates in the state’s 1,681 caucuses while ensuring stray O’Malley supporters don’t defect to Sanders.

<snip>

The O'M camp's response to the above tactical maneuver by the Clinton camp:

“We’re urging all of Gov. O’Malleys supporters to hold strong on caucus night, and we welcome all of Secretary Clinton’s supporters to back a real progressive who has actually gotten things done and can build on president Obama’s progress,” said O’Malley spokeswoman Lis Smith. “Come on over, the water is warm!”

[Gregorian]

11. That's shitty.

Come on, Bernie!!!

[AtomicKitten]

12. There has always been the suspicion ...

In early 16th-century England, a "stalking horse" was one trained to conceal the hunter walking behind it; the practice allowed human predators to sneak up on their prey without attracting suspicion. But by 1594 the term had also evolved into a metaphor for underhanded political dealing, when, according to the Oxford English Dictionary,was used to describe rulers who adopted Catholicism "as of a Maske and stalking horse" to hide their hopes of "usurping the kingdoms of other Princes."

In modern politics, the practice has been refined and, as I said, is quite often found in one party states where primaries decide elections, though it sometimes takes run-offs to secure the necessary majority. In modern political applications of the phrase, a stalking horse is either a candidate used to divert attention from someone else's candidacy, or a candidate who splits the vote of a serious contender, perhaps unwittingly, and thus benefits a third, better-positioned candidate.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/7/29/1407050/-Updating-the-stalking-horse

[Gregorian]

16. That is really interesting.

I can't believe the things I learn around here. That one is wild on several levels. And I always like hearing about how we managed to live a long time ago. So that part is fascinating. That's how they did it.

I was going to say that I like being honest so I don't have to justify my behavior. But now that I think of it, Bernie is honest, but he's also totally keen on how to get the job done.

Thanks!

[elleng]

15. ' back a real progressive!'

[senz]

9. He's handling it with class.

Not bad at all.

[Nanjeanne]

10. They were just talking about the App on MSNBC just now

I rarely watch that station any more but I turned it on just to see what was going on and Chuck and Andrea were talking. Figured it would be a Sanders bash-fest but they were talking about the app Clinton caucus volunteers are being trained on that is to figure out when Clinton supporters can safely move to O'Malley without hurting her chances but blocking Sanders. They mentioned that this was the kind of tactic that Obama employed in 2008 and Hillary denounced loudly. But hey, whatever gets her the crown . . .

They ended the segment saying that in some cases the wifi signal isn't great in some of these rural areas so the app may fail Clinton. If only.

[askew]

13. Good for O'Malley. I think the media is underestimating him.

Hillary having top surrogates calling O'Malley supporters (Gov. Vilsack, DeBlasio, etc.) is just going to make O'Malley supporters more stubborn and willing to fight for viability in their precincts.

I think he's going to surprise and do better than expected and if he drops out after Iowa, he fought the good fight in offering the most progressive climate change, immigration and criminal justice platforms in history.

[elleng]

20. AND to hang on AFTER Iowa, askew!

[one_voice]

14. O'Malley!!!!!

[bigtree]

17. k&r

Kristin Sosanie ?@ksosanie 2h2 hours ago
24 hours until #iacaucus. #HoldStrong for @MartinOMalley.

[Turn CO Blue]

18. I feel bad for him and supporters - but his campaign is in debt with little cash.

He can't keep this up without cash; has will have to put his staff and family first.

[blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"][p lang="en" dir="ltr"]O'Malley meltdown: $169,442 cash on hand, $535,477 in debt. Owes staffers salary & has $500K outstanding bank loan

— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) February 1, 2016

ow.ly/XM6FY

[elleng]

19. 'O’Malley campaign took out loan...and has paid off the $500,000 loan.'

'Morris told the Post that O’Malley’s camp has hauled in $900,000 since Jan. 1, outside the latest FEC reporting period, and has paid off the $500,000 loan.'

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/267716-omalley-took-out-500k-loan-has-staff-working-sans-pay

[Turn CO Blue]

21. Ah, I see. The report filed yesterday shows it still outstanding on line 19b, but if that

was the year-end report and it was repaid with new funds, then I agree was a good move for his campaign and his family.


[ow.ly/XM6FY]

[http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00578658/1047228/?platform=hootsuite]

[elleng]

22. Yes, a good move,

and demonstrates his good judgment.

[bigtree]

23. k&r