For those of you who didn’t know he was running, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has suspended his campaign.

I must confess to being surprised by the way his campaign never took off and have often wondered the degree to which his campaign was simply pay-to-play funded by friends of Hillary Clinton to ensure she looked like she was engaged in an actual primary campaign. I was a subject of the State of Maryland during both of O’Malley’s terms in office and, though I disliked the guy, I had to admire the blatant way he harnessed the entire power of the state to do his bidding. (The Mayor Tommy Carcetti character in David Simon’s television series, The Wire, is based on O’Malley.) I continue to believe that if he’d actually been in the race to win, he would have been a fearsome competitor.

Be that as it may, the Democrat field is now down to a geriatric Socialist fighting a geriatric Bolshevik.