Redistributive Change

Since the introduction of Joe the Plumber a few weeks ago (and his subsequent savaging by elements of the MSM), much has been said about Barack Obama’s real position on “sharing the wealth.” You’d think that the MSM would try to investigate this subject in depth, so that the broader electorate might better understand Obama’s true thinking on this matter (Obama, of course, has been less than forthcoming on the subject).

This morning, Bill Whittle reports on a 2001 WBEZ.FM recording of Barack Obama discussing constitutional matters. You can listen to Obama make the following statement:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Whittle dissects this commentary in some detail and I would urge you to read his comments. But Obama's operative phrases are: “…The Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.” And later, “…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

I’d like to hear the 2008 version of Barack Obama answer detailed questions on what he meant by these comments and whether he still believes them. Exactly what did he mean by “redistributive change?”

But of course, the MSM won’t ask those questions, and even if they did, time is now so short that Obama’s obfuscatory answers would have no impact on the outcome of this election.

For those of us who have expressed concerns about Obama’s true position on important domestic matters such as taxation and the size and role of government, this direct, unscripted look at the real Barack Obama is not reassuring.

Until proven otherwise, I will stand by my position that the real Barack Obama (pre-2006) and the candidate Barack Obama are radically different people with radically different ideological positions. The question, I suppose, is whether Obama has changed in substantive ways. We’re gonna find out over the next four years.

I just hope it’s not the hard way.