In what could be the most critical days remaining in the race for the Democratic nomination it appears, as Senator Obama said in last night’s CNN debate, that it is truly “silly season in politics.” During the debate, Sen. Clinton continued her line of attack concerning alleged “plagiarism” by Sen. Obama and hit him hard, calling his lines, “change you can xerox.”

Obama’s use of Governor Patrick’s rhetoric does not constitute plagiarism therefore rendering her attacks false and pretty truly silly. Americans are looking for solutions, not canned attacks.

Yet, it’s still worth noting that Sen. Clinton has done the exact same thing over the course of her campaign - a glaring example taking place just last night:

Hillary Clinton: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”

Bill Clinton 1992: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”

I think people are really tired of this story. It truly is just silly.

UPDATE on the silliness: CNN has picked up the story

I was away this weekend in beautiful Stanley, Virginia, celebrating my upcoming 27th birthday with a bunch of great friends. While I was comfortably nestled in the supple bosom of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the political dirt was flying fierce between the Clinton and Obama camps.

For those of you not following the story, the Clinton campaign has accused Obama of plagiarizing parts of a speech that he gave over the weekend in Wisconsin. In the speech, he used similar language to that of his good friend, supporter and main surrogate Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Patrick has been all over the TV defending Obama and from what I can gather from the news shows this morning, most people in the media believe that this story is simply a last-ditch effort to try and take down Obama in advance of tonight’s primary. The only people who really think this is a story are the Clintons and their press people.

DoubleSpeak has not publicly endorsed a candidate and I haven’t written much about the day-to-day attacks and charges between the two camps. However, this one struck a nerve.

My boss, Mike Lux wrote up a piece on OpenLeft.com which is worth reading. Mike is a former Clinton Administration official.

Below is a blog post written by former Bill Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet from The New Republic blog, The Plank. It is an important piece and it should hopefully help to put this cooked-up scandal to rest.

Former Clinton Speechwriter Weighs In On Plagiarism-Gate

Barack Obama’s greatest strength is the originality of his rhetoric. Sometimes he talks like a regular person, as in his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when he introduced himself as “a skinny kid with a funny name.” Sometimes, he sounds like a president from an earlier, more historically literate era, as when he situates his campaign in a tradition that includes the American Revolution, the abolitionists, and the emergence of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and other social struggles. But only rarely, if ever, does he use the familiar freeze-dried phrases that most current politicians favor. To borrow a phrase from the UAW, the “domestic content” of his speeches is unusually high.

That’s only one of many reasons why it’s so silly to accuse Obama of plagiarism because he used some of the same phrases as his friend and ally, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (who, I should add, was helpful to me when he was assistant attorney general for civil rights at the same time I was a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton). If plagiarism is borrowing rhetoric without permission, Patrick most likely is happy to have Obama sound similar notes, such as hope and inspiration being more than “just words.” Even if Obama and Patrick didn’t know each other, they might use some of the same phrases because similar public figures frequently draw on common streams of public rhetoric. For instance, labor leaders often echo Walter Reuther or A. Philip Randolph; civil rights leaders draw upon the same scriptural passages and historical sources; and conservative Republicans repeatedly invoke Ronald Reagan. Similarly, John Edwards borrowed a rhetorical technique from his campaign manager, fellow populist and former Michigan congressman, David Bonior: His litany would begin “Somewhere in America,” and then he’d describe a social or economic injustice, such as a worker losing his job and his family’s health insurance. While Politico ran a story about this, it is hardly unusual for a candidate to share a rhetorical technique with his leading adviser.

After all, if there is one sentence from Scripture that is literally true, it is this line from Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the Sun.” To be condemned as plagiarism, a political speech needs to be grievously offensive–using lots of distinctive but little-known material from another source without attributing it to that speaker or receiving his or her permission. For instance, in 1987, Joe Biden once used, without attribution, a speech by the British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock, in which Kinnock credited social programs with the fact that he was the first in his family to have attended college. By borrowing the speech and inserting his own name, Biden suggested that the men in his family had been coal miners when, in fact, as Maureen Down dryly noted, his father had been an auto dealer. (In fairness, Biden had quoted Kinnock when he had given the speech on other occasions.) Does what Obama did come close to what Biden did? Absolutely not. Next scandal, please.

–David Kusnet

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton is “Fired Up and Ready to Go!”

Democrats.

Republicans.

Deval Patrick has beaten Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Healy for Governor of Massachusetts according to MSNBC. With some precints reporting, Patrick has won with 56% percent of the vote, making him the second black Governor ever in the nation.

Check out Deval on DoubleSpeak.

The stage is set for a great race between Democrat Deval Patrick and Republican Kerry Healy in Massachusetts.

Patrick was victorious last night in the Democrat Primary outdoing his closest opponents Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly.

From the Globe:

Deval L. Patrick, who rose from poverty on the south side of Chicago to corporate boardrooms and a top post in the Clinton administration, won the Democratic Party primary for governor tonight, becoming the first African-American to win a major party’s nomination for the top job in the state.

Patrick far outpaced his two better known rivals, businessman Christopher F. Gabrieli and Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, with strong showings in blue-collar urban enclaves, in liberal and conservative suburban towns, and in Western Massachusetts. He also swept Cape Cod. Early returns showed Gabrieli running second and Reilly a distant third.

Reilly appeared before supporters at about 9:45 p.m. to congratulate Patrick for running an “outstanding campaign” and to pledge to support Patrick. “We gave it everything we had; it just didn’t work out for us,” Reilly said.

Gabrieli followed shortly afterward. “I intend to work hard for Deval,” he said.

The DoubleSpeak tour will be up in Massachusetts mid-next week and we expect to have a great interview with Deval.

Deval Patrick, one of the Democrats running for the nomination in the Massachusetts Gubernatorial election was endorsed this weekend by the Boston Globe.

From the endorsement:

In choosing A governor to run the state, voters look for executive experience, wise issue positions, and the intangible quality of leadership. It is a rare thing when a candidate has all three. We believe Massachusetts Democrats and independent voters have such a person in Deval Patrick. The Globe strongly endorses his candidacy in the gubernatorial primary Sept. 19.

Patrick, 50, has not held elective office, but he has served in significant appointed office, as chief of the civil rights division in the US Justice Department under President Clinton. There, he managed an office of several hundred lawyers fighting complex issues across diverse constituencies from bankers to police officers to community organizers. After that he was a lawyer for Coca-Cola and Texaco and a member of several corporate boards. He has experience in the plushest office suites and the meanest urban streets. He has the range, the maturity, and the skill to lead Massachusetts through precarious times.

Read the rest of the Globe endorsement of Deval here…

This will still be a tight race and DoubleSpeak will be up in Massachusetts soon to cover it!

The race to replace outgoing Governor and Republican Presidential hopeful Willard “Mitt” Romney is heating up in Massachusetts.

The latest poll from the University of Massachusetts Lowell has Democrat Deval Patrick running neck and neck with presumed front runner Tom Reilly in the primary race.

The Lt. Governor of Massachsetts, Republican Kerry Healey, is vulnerable in the “bluest” of blue states and she definitely does not have the political talents of her current boss Gov. Romney.