its paranoia -- she killed on that answer

It's just a response to the accusation that Obama plagiarized Patrick; obviously, this has been said hundreds of millions of times.  In fact, if I remember my academic integrity correctly, it's not technically plagiarism until it's more than seven words which this one isn't.

Yeah, the Obama campaign is "desperate."

They needed a home run last night and they didn't get--

Oh, wait.

That's the Clinton campaign!

Wow.  You really go for broke when you plagiarize:

Seriously.

I mean it.

You're on to something.

Keep at it.

It will make all the difference in the world.

She's a shoe-in now.

He is doomed.

I mean, we're talking change we can Xerox here.

Some of you Hillary supporters have gone off the deep end.

I appreciate you posting this diary. The Obama spin machine and his MSM surrogates are getting ridiculous. Obama did a good job holding his own in the debate, but she clearly owned all the issues and owned the last response. She transcended Obama and this entire presidential race and became a president about and for the people.  

I'm sure you know that she took more from Edwards than "We're going to be fine." It was a series of comments related to being fine personally versus the country being fine.  Your cut and paste from the Clinton campaign implies that all she said was, "We're going to be fine."

Clinton:"You know, whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that's what this election should be about." [Democratic Debate, 2/21/07]

John Edwards: "What's not at stake are any of us. All of us are going to be just fine no matter what happens in this election. But what's at stake is whether America is going to be fine." [Democratic Debate, 12/13/07]

John Edwards: "I want to say this to everyone: with Elizabeth, with my family, with my friends, with all of you and all of your support, this son of a millworker's gonna be just fine. Our job now is to make certain that America will be fine." [Edwards Speech, 1/30/08;

Try some intellectual honesty.  It would be far more persuasive.  

Part of why HRC is losing is that she never admits  mistakes, even on the war vote.  In contrast, Obama has said he should have referenced Patrick in his remarks - and he said it the day the Clinton campaign raised the issue - just a few hours later.  When you admit mistakes, you get a lot of credit and the issue goes away.  When you don't, you look defensive and secretive and the issue lingers.

you should start buying up InTrade contracts.

18 cents will win you a dollar if Clinton wins the nomination.

This assumes you've already given $4600 to the campaign

this sort of thing is precisely what American voters DON'T CARE ABOUT.

the reason Keith Olbermann et al pointed out that Clinton lifted lines from both Edwards and Bill Clinton is because the accusations of "plagiarism" are silly at best.  they HAVE NO BEARING on the issues, on leadership, on who is going to be the best candidate for the Presidency.  and the candidates themselves have speech writers and surrogates who help with talking points all the goddamn time.  Hillary has them.  even McCain has them.  where the hell do you think the brusque line "change you can xerox" line came from? i can imagine Mark Penn sitting in a corner, smirking to himself giddily at his own "cleverness".

the mere fact that some of the more rabid Clinton supporters are clinging to the charge of plagiarism is because there's really nothing else left as "evidence" why Clinton would be better than Obama.  now we're getting reports that Clinton's ground operations in Texas are horribly disorganized, and that her national campaign's finances have been mismanaged to the extreme, to the point where her campaign is $7 million IN DEBT.  that's worrisome for a presidential candidate.

these are the substantive points voters care about, the ability to be a leader.  no one gives a flying damn that one of Obama's good friends helped him with a speech line that worked out so well for him during the Massachusetts Governor race.

i applaud Clinton supporter's passion to stick by their candidate, but damn, if your argument against Obama is some weak claim at plagiarism, then you may want to consider that your campaign is in a very bad spot.

This is laughable.  The Clinton supporters are focusing on one of three or four things that her final statement took from former Bill Clinton and John Edwards speeches.  Conveniently, you focus on the part that is most likely a normal phrase.  

It's so dishonest, that I'm actually laughing.  Do you actually believe that her taking points from others' speeches after lambasting Obama for plagiarism is not hypocritical?  And they say Obama supporters are delusional...  

This whole plagiarism issue is pointless to begin with, and I wish they'd focus on substantive issues, instead.      

There has been a rather disingenuous movement in the Clinton camp to mark Barack Obama as a plagiarist who just copies others ideas and brings no new ones to the table.  This is disingenuous, not because Barack Obama is a breakthrough thinker who has come up with a great degree of new material, but because Hillary Clinton is no different.

You point out correctly that the line that Clinton used was not originally from John Edwards...it goes back much further.  It's not a new idea.  In fact, it's a very much recycled idea.  But apparently, it's a well agreed upon idea.

The plagiarism accusation against Barack Obama is pretty silly.  Facing a nearly identical line of attack, Obama deflected it with an argument that Deval Patrick used in his 2006 campaign.  Because it was an effective argument then, the Obama camp, which includes Governor Patrick, decided to use it again.  And it was effective.  That was the problem for the Clinton camp.  It is an effective argument against the Clinton line of attack.  So the only way to discredit it was to treat it as if using it was wrong.

They've gotten a lot of mileage out of this argument...apparently a majority or at least substantial minority of the MyDD community has bought into it.  But it's a vacuous line of argument because it holds onto a strange standard for how to judge candidates.  Presidents are not the inventors of ideas...they are the ones who implement them.  They implement the ideas of others and they use arguments formulated by others to get there.  Holding a candidate to such a ridiculously high standard is irresponsible and frankly naïve.*

Here's the bottom line: candidates are not original.  They use the ideas of others and the arguments of others to get their ideas across.  There are a finite amount of arguments that are available and there are a finite number of ways to formulate them in the English language.  Do you think that Hillary Clinton came up with "Change you can Xerox"?  Do you think she came up with "Ready to Lead on Day 1"?  Do you think that

Some people (including some who made the rec list on this site) have posted a YouTube video showing Obama using similar language to previous speakers in several settings.  I'm here to tell you that everyone does that.  Ideas are meant to be reused and Barack has done that.  Hillary Clinton has done that.  John Edwards has done that.  In fact, just about any politician you can think of has done that.  They are not philosopher kings (or queens).  The real philosophers reside in the background.

So back to the beginning.  Why doesn't the diarist get this?  Because this diary just pointed out why the accusation that Hillary Clinton plagiarized John Edwards is ridiculous while not recognizing the same for Barack Obama.  They happened to be voicing the same opinions and happened to be using the same words to do so.  Obama used words that had been used by a campaign co-chair two year previous and Clinton used words to express a similar sentiment as one of her former opponents for the nomination.

Now, you may argue that the sentiment Clinton used was much more simple and banal and thus not as bad to copy, but that just raises the question: What is your threshold?  Do you really have a solid standard in place or are you rationalizing a dislike for a candidates actions generated by his rival's campaign?  I believe that those who are calling out Senator Obama for "plagiarism" use the latter category as their basis, despite claiming that they use the former.  The accusation that Clinton was using plagiarism is merely a demonstration that exposes this fact by forcing hypocrisy.

*Hey, what can I say...the sentiment applied.

It was also a nice concession speech. It showed she knew she was going to lose and that she was promising not to tear the party apart in the process.

Good for her.

An extremely intellectually dishonest diary.  I suspect you know what you did.

You just cherry picked a small phrase from the entire sentence and its full context.

the issue is dead, has been dead. obviously obama supporters love looking at the comparison videos (hrc, edwards, bill). it's just sorta funny given all the to-do last week about obama. but, as the debate clearly showed (and as the results of wisconsin showed), nobody fucking cares. you can say the obama campaign is keeping the issue alive....i'll bet everything i will ever own that he never ever mentions it. if he's asked, he'll dismiss it.

so, for starters, how about dropping it at mydd as well?

let's consider talking about how to beat mccain and shore up senate seats, house seats, and state houses.... oh, i guess everyone's having so much fun demonizing the other side, it would be unreasonable to expect pragmatism.

i remember fondly when this sort of nastiness was only directed at bush on mydd. grow up folks, both sides, there are a lot of elections out there to be won.

I checked Facthub, but they don't link any news organizations, or Obama's website, or have any transcript of Obama attacking her on this.  Where do I find the backup?

From Josh Marshll at TPM :

>>Bill Clinton, 92: "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."

Hillary Clinton, tonight: "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."<<

Yes.  This whole "plagiarism" issue BETTER now be officially dead.

"Every Edwards supporter used to have "Yes we Can" as their sig line since it's used for labor rallies-- not that it originated with Edwards (actually Che Guivera, I think)."

Actually it was Cesar Chavez, the great labor activist who organized farm workers in California. He coined it in Spanish, "Si, si puede!" It's long been associated with unions and particularly with Chavez.

Wasting time is even more of a problem than wasting money.  You can raise more money.  You can even go into debt.  But once you use the time, it's gone.

I can't imagine that this issue is the best use of Clinton's time.

... not for the maimed veterans who were sent to Iraq with her complicity.

Shame on her for using their suffering to gin up sympathy for her failing campaign.

She was choking up for her own maimed ambitions. Period.

... not for the maimed veterans who were sent to Iraq with her complicity.

Shame on her for using their suffering to gin up sympathy for her failing campaign.

She was choking up for her own maimed ambitions. Period.

lets talk on the 5th.

Did they just debunk a straw man? Where's the reference to where Obama says something about Clinton Plagiarising anything?

I think Obama, along with 99.9% of America, finds this whole plagiarism thing to be amusing at best, and downright irritating at worst. She should never have even brought it up, it only cost her.