O’Malley sees support building for his 2016 presidential bid

WEST DES MOINES - Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley believes his long-shot bid to land the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination has turned an important corner and is beginning to build momentum in a three-way race.

'Since last I saw some of you, we have firmly secured third place in this race,” O'Malley jokingly told about 75 people at a suburban coffee house Saturday forenoon - referring to the fact that Democrats Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee recently dropped out of the 2016 race. 'We have secured third and we are moving up.”

However, he said his optimism goes beyond that, noting that his performances in the party's first nationally televised debate and at Iowa's Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner have caused his stock to rise in terms of name and face recognition, larger crowds at his events, increasing numbers of Iowans backing his campaign, and an uptick in enthusiasm among his committed based.

'There's been a huge shift and a huge change since that first debate and I notice it not only here but in New Hampshire as well,” he told reporters after a question-and-answer session with potential Iowa caucus attendees. 'The Iowa JJ-Dinner was a huge turning point for us.”

O'Malley said his campaign has moved from the introductory phase to the 'compare-and-contrast” phase with rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with his foremost selling point as a former governor and Baltimore mayor that he 'has actually gotten things done as an executive that the other two can only talk about wishing that they had gotten done.”

'I'm very excited about it,” he said of his improving position in what he acknowledges is an uphill bid. 'It was a long walk across the desert, but now we have some oxygen on the flame that is this candidacy and I think it's just going to continue to grow.”

During his campaign stop, O'Malley touted his plans to raise the minimum wage, promote clean energy goals, cut gun violence deaths in half in 10 years, provide debt free college within five years, cut youth unemployment in next three years with national service and bring about comprehensive immigration reform, saying 'our endearing symbol is not barbed wire or razor fences, it is the Statue of Liberty.”

He said the nation needs to reject the trickle-down economics that Republicans again are offering, asking his Iowa listeners 'have you ever seen a stalk of corn grow from the tassel down?

'We have to shake ourselves out of that false economics that led to the worst economic crash since the Great Depression and instead we have to restore the middle out and the middle up economics,” he said.

Turning to foreign policy, O'Malley called for America to engage and collaborate with other nations to form new alliances that would be more adaptive and more flexible to changing international challenges.

'Any nation that is in the habit of pivoting is a nation that's in search of a more enduring foreign policy and that's what we need to develop as a nation,” he said. 'We work best in this world when we're engaged and when we're collaborating. There's other ways to do that beyond our military powers and that's what we need to do.”

He saw potential for those alliances in Africa, the Americas, the South China Sea, the open navigational waters of the arctic and the United Nations, where instead of a focus on peacekeeping forces the approach would be having a 'peacemaking” force.

'We need a national security strategy that's focused on multiple rising threats and doesn't wait until we're backed into a military corner before we take action in collaboration with other nations to do so,” O'Malley said. 'That means dialing up diplomacy, dialing up sustainable development.”