Obama and Change?

If Barack is really about change and sincere about being a uniter, not a divider, then he needs to teach his supporters how to be representatives of that message.

From Swampland:

If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner’s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting “O-bam-a” and “Fired Up, Ready to Go!” So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to “please take their seats for safety concerns.”

By comparison Hillary was twice booed. The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you. The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: "The there are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second," and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. "Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”

What boorish behavior from the Obama supporters!

After his Iowa victory on Thursday night, Obama claimed to be the man capable of changing things, of bringing about a "let's all get along" utopia.

OBAMA: You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington.

(APPLAUSE)

To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.

(APPLAUSE)

Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

(APPLAUSE)

We are choosing hope over fear.

(APPLAUSE)

We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

(APPLAUSE)

AUDIENCE: We want change! We want change! We want change! We want change!

They want change? Really?

If the New Hampshire Democrat Party dinner is any indication, Obama's fans aren't ready to move beyond "bitterness and pettiness and anger."

They aren't ready to choose "unity over division."

They act like preschoolers in dire need of a nap.

Obama himself needs some lessons in proper behavior as well.

NASHUA, N.H. -- After beating John Edwards in Iowa on Thursday, Barack Obama has decided to join him -- repeatedly poaching his opponent's themes, language, and even jokes.

"We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country -- we should be respecting work," Obama told an overflow crowd in a high-school gym today.

Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign was centered around the idea that the Bush administration had launched a "war on work" through tax cuts that offer incentives for investment over labor. "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth," Edwards said in accepting his party’s vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic’ convention in Boston. In this campaign, he has sharpened his populist rhetoric, railing against greedy corporate CEOs who are waging war on working people and the middle class.

Since arriving in New Hampshire Friday, Obama has borrowed Edwards's favorite verb by bragging that he had "fought" as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer, and conceding that "insurance companies and drug companies will not give up their profits" -- which Edwards asserts repeatedly to ridicule Obama's talk of conciliation. Obama repeatedly invoked those interests, as well as "big oil and big insurance," common villains in Edwards speeches.

For months, Obama has been telling crowds, "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Edwards gave a similar spin to his short political resume when he announced his candidacy in September 2003, declaring, "I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change it."

The two candidates share a common strategist -- David Axelrod, the mastermind of Obama '08, helped launch Edwards '04 –- and now a common goal of standing as the reformist outsider against Hillary Clinton.

Even a new Obama laugh line -- joking about pharmaceutical ads that "have all these people running around in the fields and stuff" -- evokes an anecdotal staple of Edwards's 2004 "Two Americas" stump speech used to ridicule the marketing budgets of pharmaceutical companies.

I guess Obama isn't about change.

He's serving up the same old, same old.

He's leftovers reheated in the microwave.