Last night, Deval Patrick and Hillary Bill Clinton held a rally for Niki Tsongas. Patrick had some choice words on the blurring strategy, which you can watch in this video:
Here are the passages that really caught my attention (emphasis mine):
But the change, the change has got to come from us, because we, regularly political people of every political background, keep falling for what Republicans say, and not holding them accountable for what they do.
There is a great deal at stake in this election, but if you listen closely to the two candidates, to the substance, they will sometimes sound a lot alike. And that's because if you are a Republican today in Washington, or rather if you are a Republican running to go to Washington, you run as fast as possible from away from the administration in Washington, and you try to blur the difference between that administration and Democratic principles and ideals.(…)
They both say, I've heard them both say, that they want an end to the war in Iraq, but one candidate wants to keep the troops there indefinitely. Does that sound like an end to the war in Iraq to you? And the other candidate, our candidate, is ready to make that hard call now.
In a funny way, both candidates sound like Democrats, but only one candidate is one. Only one is one, and that candidate is Niki Tsongas.
This is a great speech for Tsongas by Patrick, and it shows he really gets what is going on in terms of Iraq and electoral politics. Given that Hillary Bill Clinton was also at the event, I hope he has a chance to repeat the emphasized passage to Bill, and ask him to give the message to his wife. Hillary Clinton has still not said when she will pull all of the non-embassy troops out, and 2013 is apparently too early. To paraphrase what Deval Parick said, keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely does not sound like an end of the war to me.
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