Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has been laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign for quite a while. These past few days, he continued to walk and talk just like a presidential candidate would in Iowa. On Thursday, he spoke at Simpson College and headlined a fundraiser for State Representative Scott Ourth before speaking to a good crowd in a heavily Democratic Des Moines neighborhood. The next day, he taped an episode of “Iowa Press” on Iowa Public Television (video and full transcript here; excerpts after the jump). O’Malley wrapped up Friday with a well-received speech at the Polk County Democrats’ spring event (click through for video or audio). The stump speech blended a summary of his accomplishments as Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor with a vision for the future. For laughs and applause, he threw in some good jabs at tea party Republicans. Before and after the speech, O’Malley worked the room of activists. His staff had put down placemats and postcards for people to take home.

Yet I still can’t shake the feeling that O’Malley will not follow through with running for president.  

I can’t write a long post to support this feeling, because on paper, the evidence pointing toward O’Malley’s candidacy overwhelms my hunch that he won’t run.

Democrats desperately want a competitive Iowa caucus campaign. O’Malley’s political action committee has hired staff here. The message he’s been delivering at events around the state includes something for almost every important Democratic constituency. He speaks passionately about supporting working people and improving their wages to strengthen the middle class. He signed into law an minimum wage increase. He also signed measures to establish marriage equality for Maryland’s LGBT couples and to provide in-state tuition for “DREAMers” (undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children). He helped make it easier for citizens to vote in Maryland. For the environmentalist crowd, O’Malley points to a cleaner Chesapeake Bay and a commitment to invest in a renewable energy future.

Political journalists and analysts see O’Malley as the the biggest potential rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who made her campaign official today. Does O’Malley see himself in that role? His stump speech calls for reining in Wall Street to keep “big banks from ever wrecking our economy again,” but speaking to the National Journal’s Ron Fournier, O’Malley declined to bash Clinton for raking in Wall Street money (an obvious line of attack). On Iowa Public Television, he passed up a chance to hit Clinton hard over her use of a private e-mail account and less than full disclosure of e-mail records from her tenure as secretary of state.

The closest O’Malley has come to making a case against the front-runner is telling interviewers that “the presidency should not be treated like some sort of crown to be passed between the two biggest fundraising families in American history” and saying in his stump speech, “Triangulation is not a strategy that will move America forward. History celebrates profiles in courage, not profiles in convenience.”

Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb could not have been more clear about his intentions during his remarks to Polk County Democrats: “I’m committing to you right now we’re going to go over the whole state here. We’re going to be back as many times as we can get here.” In contrast, when I mentioned to Governor O’Malley on Friday that I would probably see him at lots of Iowa events this year, he replied, “I’ll be in or out of this [campaign] by the end of May.”

O’Malley could do well in the Iowa caucuses. I don’t see him winning in any scenario now that Clinton is in the race, but he has good reasons to run anyway. The governor’s message appeals to most Democrats. He could grab a large share of the “anybody but Hillary” vote, once people wake up to the fact that Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are not running for president. Articulating a strong vision without bashing the front-runner could provide a springboard for a cabinet post in a Clinton administration. Or, O’Malley may feel that he has to be a candidate to provide the “robust issues debate” the Democratic Party needs. As an undecided caucus-goer as well as a political blogger, I want to hear about substantive issues from as many candidates as possible in the coming months.

But if O’Malley ends up leaving that debate to others, I won’t be surprised.

Excerpts from Martin O’Malley’s April 10 appearance on “Iowa Press”:

Borg: If you were composing a Twitter message in brevity, how would you describe right now your status as a possible presidential candidate?

O’Malley: I would say seriously considering. […]

Henderson: Governor, today’s news is that Hillary Clinton will likely make her candidacy official this weekend. Do you intend to challenge her? And if so, why?

O’Malley: Well, I don’t look at running for president as a matter of challenging one or another person. I look at this as the presidency is a sacred and awesome trust that is to be exercised on behalf of the people of the United States. And it’s really up to the people of our country to decide who their president will be. So, for my part, I’m focused on 15 years of executive experience, the frameworks and the ideas to govern and move our country forward and I believe that if any candidate believes they have those things they make our country stronger by giving people the choice and offering their candidacy. So I think our party and our country would be well-served by a robust debate about the questions and the answers that we have to provide in order to move our country forward and fix what is still ailing our economy.

Henderson: You supported Secretary Clinton in 2008. Why are you not now?

O’Malley: Well, I believed in 2008 that she would have been the best candidate and the best President for those times. I believe right now that times have changed in our country and I believe that we need to have a robust issues debate in our party about the sort of leadership that is required right now for our country. […]

Lynch: This week the Quinnipiac University poll came out showing that in Iowa and other swing states support for Hillary Clinton has dwindled since revelations about her email-gate. And I’m wondering is that a problem that democrats should be worried about, the fact that voters are saying she’s not honest and trustworthy? And does that create an opening for an alternative?

O’Malley: Well I believe that our party always has a sort of gravitational pull, if you will, towards the future. And our party is always looking for new voices and new perspectives to help us solve our problems. Secretary Clinton is capable of answering those questions and I’m sure will be able to defend herself and proudly talk about her record of service to our country. For my part, I believe that openness, transparency are very, very important to both the operations of government and also to the communications of any modern leader. But I think the larger issues in this race will be which candidate has the framework and the ideas that will allow and make sure that wages start rising again in our country because right now we’ve gone through 12 years where wages have stagnated or actually declined for 80% of us and that is the big issue on the table of our democracy. That is why people are more pessimistic today about their children’s future than they were four years ago and that is what we need to address as a party and as candidates. […]

Lynch: How do you — assuming that you get into this race for President — how do you compete on foreign policy against a former Secretary of State?

O’Malley: Well, I think former Secretary of State will certainly — Secretary Clinton will have things that she can talk about during her term of office. My perspective is not that of a Secretary of State, it is the perspective of an executive, an executive who understands how to surround himself with very strong, knowledgeable and capable people, who understands that threats change and the priorities of threats change from day-to-day and sometimes from moment to moment and is able to also make decisions in a timely way appreciating that indecision and a lack of a decision often allows problems to grow and become deeper.