Article snippet: According to former Maryland governor and 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, former President Obama, the Democratic party in recent elections. “What is happening now is the party is regenerating itself, almost like after a bad forest fire,” O’Malley told ABC News' Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl and Political Director the Powerhouse Politics podcast. He says the "fire" started in 2008. He believes Obama squandered the energy of his candidacy. “Rather than infusing that energy into the veins of the Democratic party and making the Democratic party new and more energetic, instead, the president and his people decided to set up a separate organization in ‘Organizing for America.'" O’Malley says that Republican donors took advantage of the situation, sweeping state and local races around the country. During the 2016 presidential race, O’Malley said the Clintons were a “formidable force” who did everything in their power to secure the nomination within the rules as they found them. But it is the DNC that O’Malley said has “a lot of work to do”. O’Malley dropped out of the presidential campaign after the Iowa primary, but he blames DNC decision-making surrounding the early debates in 2015 as a significant factor in Donald Trump's rise beginning that July. “Every two weeks they were having Hillary Clinton to hold off until October, “by then, Donald Trump’s fascist appeal was out of the bottle.” O’Malley considers hi... Link to the full article to read more