(CNN) — Martin O’Malley said that although he endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008, Americans need a president who is independent of Wall Street in 2016.
Clinton reminded the former Maryland Governor and the Democrat debate audience Tuesday night that O’Malley supported her previous presidential run, using it in an answer to defend her judgment.
“The biggest change that happened in these eight years is this — the recession, the crash that was precipitated by recklessness on Wall Street,” he said Wednesday on CNN. “And I believe that what the people of our country expect is a president independent enough to actually follow through on the promises that were made eight years ago to rein in that recklessness.”
O’Malley suggested that electing Clinton would be going “back to the big names of the past.”
“I’ve traveled all around the country and the two phrases I hear people say again and again and again are ‘We need new leadership’ and ‘We need to get things done again,’” he said. “I’m genuinely concerned as a party that we can’t speak to what America needs right now by resorting simply to old formulas and old thinking from the past.”
O’Malley said he was able to make progress passing gun controls laws as governor that Bernie Sanders has not been able to in the Senate.
“Maybe it’s actually healthy that I haven’t been in Congress, because sometimes when you’ve been there as long as Sen. Sanders has … on this issue we have a deep disagreement,” he said.
The debate allowed Americans to learn that there are more candidates than Clinton and Sanders, O’Malley said.
“I think that for the first time people viewing from across the country saw that there were more than two candidates running for president in the Democratic party,” he said.
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