As TPM commenter cswartout noted, the media already covered the similarities in their rhetoric 10 months ago. It's not like this is some big mystery. Not only are Obama and Patrick friends, but they have used the same media strategist: David Axelrod. That should explain a lot.
What's interesting, though, is that Obama first used the quote in question as a criticism of Saul Alinsky, the famous radical Chicago community organizer. (Hillary Clinton's college thesis analyzed Alinsky's tactics.)
An intriguing and revealing 2007 TNR profile of Obama quoted him as saying:
Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest. Sometimes the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful. We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.' Those are just words. I have a dream.' Just words. But they help move things. And I think it was partly that understanding that probably led me to try to do something similar in different arenas."
In a comment to an earlier post, YRHT compatriot joejoejoe pointed us to this essay by Obama that discusses community organizing in the inner city, "After Alinsky".
