"Hope & Change" Update: Is Obama's Entire Campaign Stolen From Deval Patrick? Looks Like It...

Jeez. Barack Obama's entire campaign seems to be a rerun of Deval Patrick's 2006 gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts...

Sidebar: At the very end of this post, you'll realize why Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts so handily.




This is just sad.

On many levels.

When you ain't got nuthin' but speeches and generic platitudes about hope and change, it's pathetic when you get caught copying them.

Or, should I say...

It's pathetic when David Axelrod takes his Patrick gubernatorial hope & change campaign and reruns it as Obama's presidential campaign.

The Obama campaign also confirmed comments chief strategist David Axelrod -- an adviser on Obama's Senate campaign and Patrick's gubernatorial run -- made to the New York Times about the speeches.

"They often riff off one another. They share a world view," The Obama campaign also confirmed comments chief strategist David Axelrod -- an adviser on Obama's Senate campaign and Patrick's gubernatorial run -- made to the New York Times about the speeches. Axelrod told the Times about Obama and Patrick. "Both of them are effective speakers whose words tend to get requoted and arguments tend to be embraced widely.

Oh, right. Sure.

The Nation had Axelrod's number a year ago last month...

Which brings us to something else the two men share: David Axelrod, the 51-year-old reporter turned media consultant who was the key media strategist for both men's campaigns. He's the one who wrote those ads, framed that shot and came up with the "Yes We Can" tag line. "I don't bring these messages to candidates," Axelrod says when I point out the similarities. "I look for candidates who exemplify and reflect those messages." In the cases of Obama and Patrick, he says, the work is a collaboration. "They take and improve on what you bring them; they deliver it well because they believe in it. It's like riffing with great musicians."

Time to wake up, people. Obama and Deval Patrick are media creations, and that creator's name is David Axelrod.

Last April, Boston.Com wrote about the Obama echo of Patrick's speeches. Ahem...

When a delegation of Massachusetts Democrats heard Obama speak at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting in Washington in February, they could trace the thread, said state Democratic Party chairman Philip W. Johnston.

"We all said that we could have closed our eyes when Obama spoke [and] it could have been Deval," Johnston said. "To us it was a similar kind of message.

The burning question: How's that hope and change campaign rhetoric translating into action for Governor Patrick?

Patrick’s first year in office has been a train wreck. But that’s what happens when a politician runs as an “idea” as much as a “human politician,” these the words of journalist Charles Pierce in his must-read piece The Mis-Education of Duval Patrick in The Boston Globe.

Pierce goes on to say: “Because of the nature of the campaign he ran. Patrick has spent his entire first year walking a thin line between two cliches of the established political narrative.

"There is the reformer who spends all of his time at loggerheads with the culture of The Building, watching his cherished proposals vanish in the Legislature like a bowling ball dropped into a vat of oatmeal. And then there is the reformer who "sells out" to the established power against which he ran, thereby disillusioning the primary base of his support.”

And you were wondering how in the world Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts.

Wonder no more.



Best bar bet in the world: Delilah didn't do it.
Judges 16:19-- And she made him (Samson) sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head.