Republicans Excoriate Obama On ‘Wealth Redistribution’ [VIDEO]

[Updated] Excerpts from a radio interview of Sen. Barack Obama in 2001 are being pushed by Republicans as proof that Obama believes in a radical, government-forced redistribution of wealth “that should profoundly shock any American.” (NRO) The interview is the top story on the Drudge Report, which got 20 million page visits in the past 24 hours and often sets the agenda for right-wing media. McCain aides say he will seize on the remarks. (ABC)

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded: “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. 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.” (ABC)

Obama adviser Cass Sunstein added: “”What the critics are missing is that the term ‘redistribution’ didn’t mean — in the Constitutional context — equalized wealth or anything like that. It meant some positive rights, most prominently the right to education. [...] he’s basically taking the side of the conservatives then and now against the liberals.” (Politico) The widely-circulated YouTube excerpts from the interview omit the other two professors interviewed and the context of the discussion: slavery and whether the Supreme Court could create the right to a social safety net (to things like education and welfare), a position Obama rejected.

You can listen to the whole hour-long interview here.

The three-minute YouTube excerpt is here:

Sources:

• Shame, Cubed; Three separate reasons to be appalled, each more disgusting than the last. (NRO)
• McCain to Attack Obama for Public Radio Comments from 2001 (ABC)
• McCain slams Obama on ‘redistribution of wealth’ (Boston Globe)
• Controversial Obama radio interview surfaces (Salon)
• Obama advisor pushes back on ‘redistribution’ (Politico)

Partial transcript (selected comments):

Obama: 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 ventured 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.

[...]

Caller: “The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama: You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way. [...]

You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. [...]”