First Barack Obama told Joe the plumber that “when we spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” Then the truth of his tax play hit the mainstream; it’s not actually tax cuts but tax credits.

Then Joe Biden scoffed at a reporter who asked if Obama’s tax plan was Marxist. Then the campaign told that TV station they would no longer get interviews with anyone from the Obama campaign.

And then this…

In that clip Obama says that the civil rights movement didn’t bring enough “economic justice” and he mentions, by name, the redistribution of wealth to solve that injustice. He continues by not having a discussion about the rights and wrongs of the redistribution of wealth, but rather what the best way to implement it is.

Obama notes that the Warren Court didn’t go far enough and that during their time of making decisions on a countless number of landmark cases they should have gone further and ruled on the redistribution of wealth. Obama said the Warren Court wasn’t radical, yet they made some of the most controversial and far reaching decisions in the nation’s history.

Americans like capitalism, they don’t want the redistribution of wealth. A Gallup poll taken during the summer found that Americans oppose the redistribution of wealth by an 84-13% margin. Clearly the idea of redistribution, an idea in which Obama holds, is a radical idea.

Obama also mentions how the Constitution is a “charter of negative liberties.” Ed Morrissey at HotAir has a good explanation for why it is.

That’s because the Constitution was intended as a limiting document, to curtail the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states and the individual. The founders intended at the time to limit the reach of the federal government, and built the Constitution accordingly.

From what I’ve read thus far the liberal blogs and media are trying to spin this as a civil rights issue. And that Obama was merely saying that not enough was done to lift African Americans out of poverty after the civil rights movement. That was what he used as his example, but when the woman called in and asked “is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically” and should it be through the courts or legislation; Obama didn’t say it was too late. In fact he said that he wasn’t “optimistic” about the courts bringing “redistributive change” because it the process is “essentially administrative.”

It’s clear that Obama wasn’t simply saying, “we should have had redistribution of wealth as part of the civil rights movement,” but rather that we still need redistribution and that it can happen through administrative solutions.

The Obama campaign is already doing damage control, and blaming the whole thing on McCain.

“In this interview back in 2001, Obama was talking about the civil rights movement – and the kind of work that has to be done on the ground to make sure that everyone can live out the promise of equality,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says. “Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Obama’s economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut. It’s just another distraction from an increasingly desperate McCain campaign.”

Burton purposely skews Obama’s tax plan. His plan is not to give “the middle class a tax cut,” it’s to give the middle and lower class tax credits, paid for by the wealthy. That is a classic example of the redistribution of wealth.

Burton continues…

In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point – and what he called a tragedy – was that legal victories in the Civil Rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country.

Burton is right in one regard, Obama spoke of tragedies as people rely on the Courts to change society, but he misses the whole second half of the quote.

…and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change

Obama thought it was a tragedy that people looked to the courts for “redistributive change” and not “political and community organizing activities.” So he thought it was a tragedy that people were looking to the wrong system to bring the redistribution of wealth.

What impact will this have on the election. If McCain releases a TV ad today, goes on all the major news networks, and goes around the country for the next 8 days and pushes this quote from Obama and hammers on the idea that his tax plan is the redistribution of wealth and that it’s socialism, it could have a major effect.

However, if McCain drags ass on this and doesn’t get on it right away; it will have little impact. The media will spin this, or not report it. McCain cannot expect the media to do their job.

UPDATE: Bill Burton is a spokesperson for the Barack Obama campaign and also happens to be the biggest tool on planet earth. Listen as he blames Fox News for pushing their agenda by running this “made up story” and then whines and cries when Megan Kelly gives him what he deserves; a good old whoopin’ that poor Burton can’t handle.

Seriously. How old this guy, seven?

–jb