Saturday, March 21, 2015

"Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) is attempting to do a "Carter" in 2016. Yes, I am fully aware that there is one very enormous name in the game: Hillary Clinton. O'Malley is positioning himself to be there if Clinton decides not to run, or to just pick up the pieces if she fails. O'Malley is 52 years old but looks much younger. He's lost only one election (for state Senate). It was his first try. (So did, by the way, Presidents Obama, Clinton and George W. Bush.)"

The headline is from mid-item, here. The item notes that the year was 1976, and:

I had the privilege of working at the time for Mo Udall. Mo was called the "gentle giant." He was a 6-foot-5, proudly liberal congressman from the Cactus State of Arizona. He had one eye and a wickedly playful sense of humor.

Accomplished and hugely popular, this respected legislator had scores of his colleagues from then-Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.) to then-Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) to then-Rep. Herman Badillo (D-N.Y.) campaigning for him. He was by far the class of the field. The other contenders that year were no slouches: the dashing Sargent Shriver, the former Peace Corps director and 1972 Democratic vice presidential nominee; the steady and solid Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.), the author of more constitutional amendments than anyone in Senate history; Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.); the irrepressible, maverick populist Sen. Fred Harris (D-Okla.), who declined a Senate reelection bid to run for president in 1972 as well; and later on, the young Gov. Jerry Brown (D) of California and the very smart and gutsy Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho).

But with all this weighty competition, Carter beat them all and was nominated in New York on the first ballot. Carter won because he was a presidential candidate, full-time.

Hillary cannot be a full-time candidate, as busy as she is sorting through email.

Another item from The Hill, here, notes:

Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of emails that she believed could be considered official government communications, but she deleted 30,000 emails that she considered to be personal.

If you go by a normal email load, at most it would be 100 per day, so that the deleted amount would be 300 days worth of stuff.

Have you ever gone back and culled through your old email?

It is a royal pain.

To have sorted 55,000 from 30,000 is a Herculean task, especially for a little old lady.