The issue, though, is not merely that O’Malley is a ho-hum speaker. Among political prognosticators, he is often referred to as the Howard Dean of 2016—the candidate with the best chance of galvanizing the party’s liberal base. In part, this expectation comes from his progressive roots. O’Malley was raised in an active Democratic family in the Washington suburbs and volunteered for Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign while attending Catholic University. He married into a well-known political family in Baltimore, where he fashioned himself into a young urban reformer, battling crime and corruption. As Steve Kearney, a former O’Malley adviser, says: “That was about all he talked about when he was a city councilman—that it was not fair that we accept a level of chaos and violence and unhappiness in poor neighborhoods that we’d never accept in wealthier ones.”

The problem is that, as a national politician, O’Malley won’t, or perhaps can’t, articulate those values. His preferred mode is that of a bloodless consultant with a tin ear. After the Obamacare debate, he complained that his fellow Democrats “immediately run to the values of caring and fairness” instead of focusing on the economic case for reform. Arguing against tax cuts for the rich on “Charlie Rose,” he said: “I don’t look at it as fairness. I look at it as doing the things that work.” In Maryland, he sold both marriage equality and immigration reform on the logic that they would make the state more business-friendly. Indeed, on nearly every high-profile issue, he was following the agenda of the increasingly liberal state legislature rather than leading it.