The Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America

Joe the Plumber elicited from Senator Obama the words "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody" a phrase that Obama has been trying desperately to separate himself from ever since.

Over the weekend, an NPR interview from 2001 resurfaced that has Obama striking a very similar tone

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 invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society....

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

The Obama campaign similarly tries to discount these seemingly indicting words

"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 said. "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."

I don't think so. It seems quite plain to me that Obama is stating that he doesn't see the courts as the way to the redistribution that he plainly sees as being necessary. So if the Court is not the way, then the way must be political power. The type of political power that would be embodied in a Pelosi-Reid-Obama run government.

And lest you buy the spin coming out of the Obama campaign that Joe the Plumber was a mistatement and the 2001 interview was talking about Courts, Ed Morrissey has dug up yet another instance of Obama talking redistribution, this time while addressing the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in 1996:

The current proposals for welfare reform are intended to eliminate welfare but it’s also true that the status quo is not tenable. A true welfare system would provide for medical care, child care and job training. While Barack Obama did not use this term, it sounded very much like the “social wage” approach used by many social democratic labor parties. By “workforce preparation strategy”, Barack Obama simply meant a coordinated, purposeful program of job training instead of the ad hoc, fragmented approach used by the State of Illinois today.

Captain Ed points out that Obama won the endorsement of the CDSA in his bid for State Senator.

To reitierate, Obama's association with Bill Ayers, does not mean that Obama is a terrorist. But it likely means that he does share Ayers economic (and educational) point of view: which is decidedly anti-Capitalist. And it's not just Ayers; it's the whole panopoly of his associations which are all Socialist/Communist in nature.

From Trotskite Ayers, to Black Liberationist Rev Wright, to his mentor the Communist Frank Marshall Davis it is less reasonable to believe that all of a sudden Obama has gone mainstream on the economy.