Bob Brady To Channel Adlai Stevenson, Al Smith, William Jennings Bryan In Next Campaign Speech

Bob Brady apparently wants everyone to know that not only can he win the race for mayor, but he can do it even while channeling losers.

The Inquirer’s Michael Currie Schaffer writes that Brady’s announcement speech contained a few lines that had been used before:

When Bob Brady announced his mayoral candidacy on Thursday by declaring that “help is on the way,” veterans of past Democratic campaigns may have felt a sense of deja vu. The line was the key refrain of John Kerry’s 2004 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention and a constant theme in the campaign that followed.

And the very next line of Brady’s speech - “I’m Bob Brady, and I’m running for mayor” - evoked an even more distant Democratic standard-bearer. In 1976, a little-known Georgia politician introduced himself to voters by traveling the country declaring, “I’m Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.”

The Brady campaign says the lines were merely coincidental, but I can’t help but think that channeling John Kerry and Jimmy Carter — even accidentally — isn’t the best idea for a candidate who wants to, y’know, win.

Echoes of the past in Brady’s present [Inquirer]