Martin O'Malley

....of the product. ( i.e. public education.) There's no getting around it: that's a handicap. Not politically, but in terms of not really being able to viscerally understand the problems and complexities of public education. In other words: he can't possibly understand public school *culture*. Having spent his entire life absenting himself from it.

(Doesn't make him a war criminal; just means he has no relevant life experience .)

He does have POLITICAL experience in dealing w. public school issues as POLITICAL problems. Here your defense sounds exactly like the defense of Bernie by the Sandernistas ( see link in OP)

He spent money for this, he increased funding for that. But this is a poor measure of the quality of actual ed policy. Lots of money in public education is wasted and/or stolen. What's DONE with the money is what counts.

NYC, for example, just pulled the plug on its Bloomberg Era 200 million dollar ( don't hold me to the exact figure) ARIS data student tracking software six years after it spent the money. The friggin' thing didn't work. Plus the Chancellor quit his job and started ( w. Rupert Murdoch, yet!) a company that made a zillion $$ "servicing it."

There's double-talk and sleight of hand ALL OVER AND ALL THROUGHOUT public ed ( and *particularly* in the "reform" sector of the industry). It's going to take someone who knows how schools work ..... or who unlike Obama... knows WHAT he does NOT know but has the sense to find people who DO KNOW and allows them to guide him through the mine field.

Obama's problem was that he thought he understood public ed. Sounds like that could be a problem for O'Malley also. Or at least for the people pushing him.