Will A Populist Run In 2016?

Here's some rhetoric you rarely hear out of major candidates in the Democratic Party:

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s (D) “biggest applause line during a speech here this week came as he listed ways the U.S. could pay for a higher minimum wage, an expansion of Social Security and more spending on infrastructure and education,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said O’Malley: “We do it by asking the wealthiest among us to believe enough in their country to actually make the sort of investments we made in other generations instead of offshoring their profits and offshoring their wealth.”

Let's compare O'Malley to another governor:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo , whose center-right policies have alienated him from much of his party’s progressive base, attacks the “extreme left of the Democratic Party” in his new memoir, according to a report in the New York Times.

...

According to the Times – which got its hands on a copy of his new memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life – Cuomo rips the “extreme left” in the book, particularly for what he depicts as its hostility to the rich. Leftists, Cuomo writes, “speak of punitively raising taxes on the rich and transferring the money to the poor” and seek to “demonize those who are very wealthy.”

I don't think O'Malley's a populist or even a liberal any more than Hillary Clinton is.

Strategically though, this is the only place for him to run in 2016, especially if no other "progressive" candidate jumps into the race.

Not sure it matters, since Clinton is expected to run away with the primary (barring a scandal of some sort, which is always possible with the Clintons), but it would be nice to have somebody run from the left in the Democratic Primary and talk about the need to make the wealthiest among us (who get wealthier by the year) pay their fair share in taxes as the wealthy did in previous generations before Regan/Clinton/Bush got through with slashing taxes to cut rates.