Associated Press: Barack Obama and Deval Patrick
Before Obama was declared the winner in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Gallup reported:
“Hillary Clinton has rebounded among Democrats in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking average for Feb. 16-18. She is now at 45% to Barack Obama's 46%. Clinton was seven percentage points behind Obama in the Feb. 15-17 average. In Monday night's interviewing, Clinton's percentage of the vote of national voters was higher than Obama's, but there has been fluidity in the nightly tracking numbers over the past several days as Democrats nationally process the intense, often heated, nature of the campaign. Monday's news coverage of the Democratic campaign was replete with a focus on the Clinton campaign's charges that Obama had plagiarized material from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and other negative attacks on Obama by the Clinton campaign. It is unclear which, if any, of these factors could be responsible for changes in the candidates' standing.”
News coverage of plagiarism found in several of Obama’s major speeches, his waffling on a pledge to accept public financing for the general election if the nominee of the opposing party did the same, and other charges raised by his opponents didn’t surface in time to influence the outcome of the Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries that Obama won handily.
It’s also true that many in the media irresponsibly followed Obama’s lead in brushing off the charges of plagiarism by suggesting that stealing lines from the speeches of Mass. Governor Deval Patrick (pictured above), as well as adopting major themes from Patrick’s earlier campaign, is no big deal.
However, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank covers all the bases this morning, noting that “A week of news that could have killed a lesser candidate only made Obama stronger,” Milbank continues:
“Obama made things worse for himself. First came word that he was backing down on his promise to seek public financing in the general election if the Republican agreed to do so -- infuriating the good-government crowd that had adored him. Then, on Saturday night, Obama responded to Clinton's criticism by borrowing, nearly word for word and without attribution, a favorite passage from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. 'Don't tell me words don't matter. 'I have a dream' -- just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' -- just words.'
“On Tuesday morning, the Clinton campaign publicized another case of Obama apparently appropriating Patrick's words: a quote from last year ('I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations') that was strikingly similar to one that Patrick uttered a year earlier ('I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations').
After detailing other incidents of plagiarism by the Obama campaign, Milbank concludes by describing Obama’s victory celebration following his win in Wisconsin, including the origin of the 'signature slogan' the harbinger of the new politics repeats at every gathering:
“A couple of hours after that, Obama was at Toyota Center, waiting backstage for the networks to announce his victory. On the floor, a woman in a too-tight shirt danced about the stage and led painful-to-the-eardrum cheers of 'Fired up!' and 'Ready to go!"
“Axelrod, the Obama strategist who authored many of the phrases the candidate borrowed from Edwards and Patrick, preceded the senator to the floor. On the jumbo screen, the campaign played a music video by the Black Eyed Peas' 'will.i.am.' Its title, "Yes We Can," is a signature slogan of the Obama campaign -- and before that, of Deval Patrick, not to mention César Chávez and Bob the Builder.
“A chant of 'Yes, we can' filled the arena, and Obama, emerging underneath a banner honoring basketball great Hakeem Olajuwon, enjoyed a reception the Houston Rockets would envy. 'The American people have spoken out, and they've said we need to move in a new direction," Obama told the arena.'
Note: The Clinton campaign likes to counter the Obamaphiles’ “Yes, we can” with the stronger version, “Yes, we will.”
The obvious corollary to the linkage of their speeches was the linkage between the two, between Mr Obama and Mr Patrick.
ReplyDeleteGovernor Patrick has had a painful to watch first year and that's the obvious thrust of cloned rhetoric, that their performace would be a clone as well.
and ayeup, I'm a Massachusetts swamp yankee which may explain why I've been inexplicably immune to the Obama frenzy, though might be my "downscale catholicism" har har har.
Bit of a Crisis of Demographic Identity the Mainstream Media's put me through hehe