October Surprise

Joe the Plumber doesn't live alone anymore.

"I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts - the institution just isn't structured that way."

As I fell asleep last night, I set the sleep timer so I could end the day with Hannity's America. There was some analyst - I don't remember who, and maybe he was on Hannity or maybe after - talking about whether there was still a way for McCain to win. He was saying yes, but not really. It would take one hell of an October Surprise for McCain to pull it out. This morning - there it is - on Drudge.

"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..."

We know that Barack was raised, politically, by radicals - and there's no hyperbole in using that language. The challenge has been knowing to what degree he, as a matured politician, still operates on the intellectual underpinnings of what he learned from Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, et al.

"As radical as people try 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 that's how the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way - that generally the constitution is a charter of negative liberties..."

In this wonderful tape, Barack talks tactics. He is disappointed that the court rulings of the civil rights years only offered blacks the protections the rest of us enjoy, but didn't force wealth redistribution on the country, and he's discussing how redistribution can be achieved moving forward.

"It says what the states can't do to you, it 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."

This proves that Barack is not a JFK "Ask not" kind of guy. He's the opposite. Which flies in the face of the premise of America, that which made the country great, the idea that if you give people the chance to get ahead based on what they can do, rather than who they are, you've achieved the end game. The results are up to them. Barack, and liberalism, wants the results guaranteed.

"...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 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. In some ways we still suffer from that."

Barack's frustration is that an activist court could have forced the country into socialism, but that the Warren Court just wasn't radical enough. In retrospect, he realizes the court is an institution that isn't designed for this sort of administrative role - he thinks that economic redistribution must be achieved some other way.

Happy October Surprise.