WASHINGTON ― Even if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had won last year’s Democratic presidential primary, he wouldn’t have defeated Donald Trump in the general election, says former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).
“I don’t believe so,” O’Malley speculated Friday on DC/BS, a political podcast hosted by Jon Allen and Peter Ogburn.
O’Malley was one of Sanders’ presidential primary challengers, and he didn’t get very far. His campaign fizzled out after the Iowa caucuses. The Huffington Post was there for his final event, when he stood on a chair in a cramped campaign office in Des Moines and urged the 100 or so people there for free pizza to help push his candidacy over the top.
If he had persevered and gone on to win the primary, O’Malley thinks he would have had a better shot at beating Trump for the presidency than Sanders or, if he had run, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I think I would have won,” he said.
Worried we have seen the last of O’Malley as a presidential contender? Fear not!
“I might run for president in 2020,” he said. “I think it’s way too early for anybody to make that determination right now.”