Martin O’Malley is enjoying a moment of largely uncritical press as he moves closer to, but not yet over, the line between being a possible and actual 2016 presidential candidate. He’s earned that with a pretty long record of success in politics and government, and the palpable desire of a lot of Democrats–especially those in cash-starved political circles in the early Caucus and primary states–for somebody, anybody, to challenge Hillary Clinton. But how real is his proto-candidacy?

That’s a question WaMo Editor in Chief Paul Glastris and his co-guests on The McLaughlin Group tried to answer last week. Give it a gander.

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Ed Kilgore, a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, is a columnist for New York.