According to pretty much everywhere on the internet, the Hillary campaign put its worst foot forward in Wisconsin, where voters go to the polls tomorrow. A loss for The Hill in Wisconsin would be the clearest signal yet that her base is breaking up— there being a hell of a lot more working class white folk than black folks and college kids in the state. Apparently feeling the heat, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson accused Sen. Obama of plagiarizing from longtime Obama friend and willing Obama speech-writing contributor Deval Patrick, who is the governor of Massachusetts. Wolfson railed to reporters that the Obama campaign is all about rhetoric but that “[Obama's] rhetoric isn’t his own.” Wolfson finished the line of attack in a righteous flourish: “When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person plagiarized from. The other is to the reader.” The Clinton campaign posted YouTubes of side-by-side speeches by Patrick and Obama, where they use the same phrasing to make the same point. It is a digital gotcha moment worthy of… only mockery.

In a rhetorical shaking of his head in disbelief, Gov. Patrick, said victim of said plagiarism, told reporters he is happy his friend used some of his speechifying turns of phrase. “We often share ideas about politics, policy and language,” he said in an official statement.

Wolfson is doing for Hillary about as well as Belgrade’s Republic Square hooligans are doing for Serbia these days. The Hill should tell her communications director to stop sipping on his big old bottle of Politics as Usual and sleep it off.