Longshot Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley has stepped up his attacks on front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The former Maryland governor, who has been pushing for additional Democratic presidential debates, now says that there are still “legitimate questions” out there surrounding the former secretary of state’s private email server.
“That’s why we need to have debates,” O’Malley told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Otherwise, our party is being defined by Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. And it’s not good for our party and it’s not good for our country.”
A longtime oppopnent of the Keystone XL Pipeline, O’Malley also hit Clinton for taking so long to reveal her position, claiming that she shouldn’t “wait for focus groups” to take a firm stance. Clinton finally came out against building the pipeline last week, while O’Malley says he did the same “over a year ago.”
“That’s what real leadership is about. That’s the sort of new leadership that people are looking for,” O’Malley said. “Not the sort of leadership that waits for poll numbers or for focus groups or puts a finger to the wind to see which way public consensus is going. No, that’s not leadership.”
This is a new development, since many of the Democrats running against Clinton have seemed reluctant to criticize her, especially on issues that Republicans have also been raising.
