Martin O’Malley Accuses Democrats of Fixing 2016 Primary for Hillary Clinton

With the Democrat primary race well under way, one candidate for the nomination insists that the Democrat Party is tilting the primaries to ensure that Hillary Clinton can more easily win the nomination.

In a recent interview with The Hill, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley criticized the Party for limiting the number of Democrat debates, a move he said was meant to protect Hillary.

“There’s an effort by a few insiders to try to limit the number of debates that we have and I’ve shared with the chair–Debbie Wasserman Schultz–that I think that’s a grave mistake and I think it’s undemocratic,” O’Malley said.

“It’s all about trying to pre-ordain the outcome, circle the wagons and close off debate,” O’Malley added. “If they could actually accelerate the date of the Iowa caucuses and hold them tomorrow–they’d like to do that. Then there’d be no campaign at all. That’s what they’d really like.”

O’Malley noted that the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, each have a long history with members of the party. Fundraising and decades of power politics puts a lot of people in debt to the Democrat couple, he said.

But Party officials say that six debates will give candidates more than enough opportunities to get their message to the voters and to showcase their capabilities compared to the other candidates.

O’Malley also said that the Party’s actions are just another reason why Americans are fed up with the establishment.

“Of all the years we should be having a debate–this is the year they want to exercise their control and try to make the presidential debate some sort of exclusive where we’re only aloud to have a handful of them. We had already had six of them, I think by this time last time around,” O’Malley told the Washington-based newspaper.

O’Malley, though, has been having a hard time making a showing in the polls, rarely getting past the 5 percent mark.

On the other hand, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is soaring in the polls now, coming within only a few points of putative frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

But O’Malley isn’t alone in having trouble getting any traction. Few of the declared Democrat candidates have been able to make much headway against Hillary and Sanders. Also announced is former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee and Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, neither of whom have made much of a dent in the polls.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com