Before there was “spread the wealth,” there was “redistributive change.”
A 2001 radio interview unearthed yesterday provided fresh fodder for John McCain‘s efforts to paint Barack Obama as a radical tax-and-spender.
The Chicago Public Radio interview features Obama hitting on the civil-rights movement’s failures in the courts. “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,” Obama said.
He explained that by focusing on the courts, civil-rights leaders failed “to bring about redistributive change,” something he described as a “tragedy.”
The remarks gave McCain yet another opportunity to remind voters of Obama’s now infamous “spread the wealth” tax chat earlier this month with Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher.
The Arizona senator dubbed Obama “Barack the Redistributor” at a rally in Dayton, Ohio.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the flap as a “fake news story.”
With Geoff Earle