« 10/16: The Final Debate | Main | 10/20: The Ultimate Obamacan? »

October 17, 2008

10/17: Not Your Average Joe

The big topic in the political blogosphere is Joseph Wurzelbacher, the Ohio plumber whom John McCain repeatedly invoked during Wednesday night's debate. Liberal bloggers began to perceive Wurzelbacher as a threat after he gave several interviews yesterday in which he criticized Barack Obama's tax plan and health care plan and claimed that "the only experience" he'd seen from Obama involved "raising our taxes." The netroots didn't like the fact that news organizations were portraying Wurzelbacher as the stereotypical "everyday voter" when he is actually a registered Republican who appears to hold quite conservative views. Several lefty bloggers argued that Wurzelbacher's attacks on Obama's tax plan were misplaced because he would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president. Others argued that Wurzelbacher was obviously a McCain supporter who only pretended to be undecided while "spewing McCain talking points". Still others raised questions about Wurzelbacher's character, pointing out that he owes $1,200 in back taxes. That said, the majority of liberal bloggers were simply annoyed that Wurzelbacher had suddenly become the media's topic du jour. Atrios complains:

"I don't care anything at all about Joe the Plumber. I care about our stupid media who have elevated this registered Republican to represent the everyman undecided voter, even though he isn't even an undecided voter. It's all so stupid."

Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, decried "Team Obama and the Obamedia's mission to tear down Joe the Plumber". Many righty bloggers accused news organizations of doing "more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they've done on Barack Obama in two years". Others predicted that there would be a "backlash" if voters perceived the media as attacking Wurzelbacher in order to help Obama. It's worth noting that all of these complaints echoed the ones voiced by conservative bloggers in the initial weeks after McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate.

JOE THE PLUMBER: Joe May Be A Plumber, But He Sure Ain't Undecided

Liberal bloggers don't believe that Wurzelbacher is really an undecided voter, since he is a registered Republican who voted in the GOP Presidential primary and appears to hold conservative views:

  • TPM's Josh Marshall: "It turns out Joe the 'Plumber' is like the perfect McCain supporter. He says Social Security is a joke and he 'hates' it."
  • TAPPED's Mori Dinauer: "Maybe I'm wrong on this, but before Joe Wurzelbacher became a household name, wasn't there an implicit assumption that he was one of these quadrennially-revered 'undecided' voters? Well, watch him being interviewed this morning or read the transcript of an earlier this conversation with him and ask yourself whether this guy would ever vote for a Democrat."
  • Daily Kos diarist icebergslim: "Joe the Plumber is a REGISTERED REPUBLICAN. Look, the man has been all over television this morning [repeating] the McCain talking points. He is going line by line from taxes, schools and social security. He is not, repeat, not an undecided voter. After watching his interview on MSNBC, the man is a plant or faking to be undecided while spewing McCain talking points."
  • Daily Kos' Jed Lewison: "We don't know much about Joe The Plumber, but we do know this: he made up his mind who he was voting for before last night's debate. Speaking with Katie Couric, 'Joe' said that he 'wasn't swayed' by the debate last night, yet pretty much knew who he was going to vote for. So if (a) he wasn't swayed by the debate and (b) knows who he is going to vote for, then (c) he had already made up his mind before the debate. Unfortunately, the national media has had a field day with Joe, almost universally reporting that he is an uncommitted voter, even though he doesn't make the same claim. [...] The last thing that struck me as odd was that when talking with Katie Couric, Joe was totally on message for McCain (except the part where he said that he had already made up his mind on who he was voting for). Bottom-line: it's not entirely clear what the real story of Joe The Plumber is. But it is entirely clear that he's not just some undecided voter. He supports McCain, and the McCain campaign sure seems to support him. This wouldn't be a story worth mentioning if the media wasn't so excited to put him on all the morning shows, but since they are, they have a responsibility to get the story right. So far, there's little indication that they will."

JOE THE PLUMBER II: He Doesn't Pay Taxes Anyway, So What's He Worried About?

Several liberal bloggers are arguing that Wurzelbacher's concern that Obama would raise his taxes is unfounded, since he would be eligible for a tax cut under President Obama:

  • The New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "It's pretty ridiculous that somebody who earns more than 99% of Americans should become a stand-in for the average working man. The picture becomes a little more clear in this interview with Katie Couric, in which Joe the Plumber admits he doesn't actually earn $250,000 a year. [...] In the same interview, he says that Barack Obama did a 'tap dance... almost as good as Sammy Davis Junior.' But Joe the Plumber is the one who lied about the central premise of his question to Obama. So the whole premise that made Joe the Plumber the icon of the debate turns out to be made up. I don't think reporters should start investigating the details of his life or anything. But if he's going to freely admit that he just made up the one fact that gave his story any political salience, then that's pretty relevant."
  • The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Based on the reports this morning, the profits of Wurzelbacher's small business are well under $250,000, so Obama's proposal wouldn't adversely affect him at all. He's apparently concerned that he may someday have those kinds of profits, though, which is obviously his prerogative. In the meantime, depending on some of the details, Wurzelbacher would probably get a tax break under Obama's plan, and if he's like most of the middle class, his break would be bigger under Obama than under McCain."

Other liberal bloggers are noting that Wurzelbacher "owes the state of Ohio almost $1,200 in back income taxes":

  • AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "John McCain's role model for a fair and just America: A guy who doesn't even pay his taxes. Expect Joe to join Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, and Lady Lynn Forrester de Redneck in the secret undisclosed location they've been banished to after having proven too much an embarrassment."
  • Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Is this average, model American citizen a tax cheat? If that's the case, Joe doesn't really need to worry about his tax rates at all, does he?"
  • Oliver Willis: "Well, now we know why he doesn't like taxes and social security."

JOE THE PLUMBER III: Enough With The Silliness!

Liberal bloggers are accusing the McCain camp of using Wurzelbacher as a political prop and are criticizing the media for playing into it:

Open Left's Chris Bowers: "In what has to be the stupidest day of the campaign since the 'Lipstick on a Pig' incident, there are nearly 4,000 Google News results for 'Joe the Plumber' today. Now, it turns out that he isn't named Joe, isn't a Plumber, isn't an undecided voter, isn't even properly registered to vote, and doesn't even pay taxes. Hard to imagine that many falsehoods packed into a single story of this utterly minimal consequence, but never underestimate the degree to which dominant news stories can be based on mendacity, especially when they are pushed by Republican campaigns."

Bowers continues: "The reason the story is so popular is almost certainly connected to the national, established media's continuing fetish for socially conservative whites as the dominant archetype for swing voters in America. This obsession has a long history, with an almost uninterrupted lineage dating from the silent majority, through the southern strategy, Reagan Democrats, soccer Moms, Bubbas, and on to 'values voters' in our own decade. It is an obsession that came out frequently in this campaign in the hundreds of stories about Obama's supposed problems with socially conservative white Democrats, and how those problems posed a barrier to winning the Presidency. If you can't win the socially conservative white vote, you supposedly can't win national elections. Not-Joe the Not-Plumber is just the latest instance of this type of story, which grants an absurd amount of power to socially conservative whites in our national political discourse."

JOE THE PLUMBER IV: Stop The Witch Hunt, Media

Conserative bloggers are accusing the media of trying to destroy Wurzelbacher in order to help Obama:

  • Michelle Malkin: "My syndicated column today reports on Team Obama and the Obamedia's mission to tear down Joe the Plumber. Yes, we are in the midst of a new contagion: Joe The Plumber Derangement Syndrome. JTPDS. Now, pay close attention to how the MSM rushes to uncover every last bit of gossip and dirt about Joe Wurzelbacher's life. Some of it is relevant to the public policy questions he posed to Obama. Much of it is not."
  • Glenn Reynolds: "[Reporters have] done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they've done on Barack Obama in two years...."
  • Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "The MSM is asking Joe Plumber much harder questions about Barack Obama than they've ever bothered asking Obama himself."
  • Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "The Tanning-Bed Media seems to feel that they have a duty to expose every last part of Wurzelbacher's life, but that asking Obama to explain his political partnerships with Tony Rezko and William Ayers, and his long friendship and financial support of rabid demagogues Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, are not just out of bounds but downright racist."
  • K. Daniel Glover: "With 15 minutes of fame comes 15 hours of 'gotcha' scrutiny -- especially if you're a voter who has dared to criticize Barack Obama, the liberal media's Chosen One for president. [...] Why is it that political reporters only get curious when a conservative Joe America storms onto the scene? Why aren't they just as curious when liberals trot out, say, a 12-year-old boy to give a national radio address? It has been almost a year to the day since journalists dropped the ball on telling America more about Graeme Frost, the boy who made the case for sinking billions of dollars more into the State Children's Health Insurance Program. But when Michelle Malkin and other curious conservative bloggers did the legwork the press wouldn't, they earned the scorn of their mainstream colleagues. This time around, with Joe The Plumber as their target, the MSM is coming out with guns blazing. Maybe they should spend more time telling the bigger story about Wurzelbacher -- that he managed to get Obama on the public record as favoring a socialistic redistribution of wealth."
  • Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "The press is attempting to find dirt on Joe. So far it has discovered that he doesn't have a plumber's license (but he apparently doesn't need one because he's working for a licensed company) and that Joe owes less than $2,000 in taxes. That's more digging than the press did on Bill Ayers, Obama's political ally, and more than all but one reporter did on Rev. Wright, Obama's spiritual mentor, until the story broke quite belatedly. [...] I don't see Obama's response to Joe the Plumber saving this election for John McCain. But to the extent that Obama, or his supporters, or his sympathizers in the media are seen as attacking the guy, there might well be a backlash. After all, Joe isn't running for office; he's just trying to make a living."
  • NRO's Jim Geraghty: "This is the way our opponents operate now. Destroy anyone who stands in your way. Humiliate them. Make sure that anyone else who ever wants to skeptically question Barack Obama knows that every last bit of their dirty laundry will be aired for all the world to see. Bristol Palin, Trig Palin, -- hey, it's all fair game. They've got to make an example of them. Show them that this sort of dangerous speech won't be allowed in the New America. Remember the man in the plaid shirt, standing at the town meeting in one of Norman Rockwell's 'Four Freedoms' paintings? He wouldn't recognize this country anymore."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Balloon Juice's John Cole also criticizes the media's conduct: "For the record, I really do not care about Joe the Plumber's background. All he did was ask a candidate for President a question, something I wish everyone got the chance to do at least once in their life. More power to him, and Obama seemed to enjoy the conversation, to boot. [...] Now there are actual MSM reporters going all through his shit and posting it everywhere, and quite frankly, it sucks. Leave him alone. [...] Granted, the right-wing whining is particularly rich after the [Scott] Beauchamp/[Terri] Schiavo/Graeme Frost incidents, and the attempts to blame media conduct in regards to Joe the Plumber on the Obama campaign are stupid and predictable, but just leave the guy alone. I don't agree with him on a lot of issues, but the guy deserves the privacy I would want for myself and for the rest of you."

ACORN: Here We Go Again...

Liberal bloggers were upset to learn that the FBI is investigating "whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud". Lefty bloggers believe that this is a partisan effort designed to suppress the vote, and they're pointing out that the Bush Admin. launched similar investigations into allegations of voter fraud before the 2004 and 2006 elections:

  • dday: "This is outrageous. This is a federally-backed effort to suppress the legal votes of minorities and the lower class. Bottom line. [...] The FBI is taking an organization with a 97% accuracy record in turning in registration forms, certainly better than the paid signature gatherers of any right-wing ballot initiative out here in California, and subjecting them to investigations and scrutiny that is wholly unwarranted. When a paid worker for ACORN falsifies a registration form, they are not scamming the voting system, they are scamming ACORN. They are trying to get paid extra for illegal work. ACORN flags every single suspicious form and turns all of them in to election officials BY LAW in most states. If they didn't, the right wing would be screaming about how ACORN holds back forms that Republicans fill out. And then, of course, the flagged registrations are noticed by election boards (if they weren't you wouldn't be hearing so much about this). And even if they weren't, Mickey Mouse and Hugh Jass and Ivanna Tinkle aren't showing up at your friendly neighborhood polling place. Not one honest person in this country seriously thinks that individual voter registration fraud is part of a coordinated effort to tip the election. [...] The Justice Department is using its law enforcement arm to stir up doubt about a legitimate community organization as a means to delegitimize this election. This is designed to sap voter confidence in the process. It's also designed to harass and intimidate low-income and minority voters."
  • digby: "It's hard to believe they are doing this again, but they are. You'll recall that this was done back in 2004 as well. [...] I don't actually blame the Bush administration for continuing their voter fraud fraud and calling in the FBI in the month before an election. Why shouldn't they? Nothing really happened as a result of their corrupt practices before, so what could possibly happen to them now that they are lame ducks? [...] You would have thought after a bogus impeachment and dubious elections in both 2000 and 2004 the Democratic party would have stopped ignoring this ongoing (and increasingly successful) propaganda campaign against non-existent voter fraud and its vote suppression effects."
  • Marshall: "DC Republicans have been aggressively lobbying the DOJ to open an investigation into ACORN in advance of the election. And leaking word of such an investigation (possibly starting the investigation at all) most likely violates DOJ guidelines about DOJ/FBI actions which can end up interfering with or manipulating an election. But, remember, this is right out of the book of the Bush Justice Department's efforts to assist in GOP voter suppression efforts in the 2004 and 2006 elections (part and parcel of the US Attorney firing story). This is the same scam US Attorney firing player Bradley Schlozman got in trouble for pulling with ACORN just before the 2006 election. And before he got canned, [ex-AG Alberto] Gonzales helped revise and soften the departmental prohibition on DOJ announcements, thus making it easier to play these kinds of games. This is a big deal. It may be their last gasp to use the DOJ to help mitigate the scale of Republican defeat on November 4th."
  • Benen: "Let's be clear: the Bush administration's politicized Justice Department pulled a scam, got caught, suffered through a massive scandal that forced an Attorney General to resign in disgrace, and now appears to be pulling the exact same scam just two years later."

On the other side of the blogosphere, Malkin is delighted that the FBI is investigating ACORN: "The FBI steps in. Finally. Let's hope it's not too late."

Meanwhile, Hot Air's Allahpundit wonders: "What if the feds come back and report that they've found some cases of fraud but nothing on a mass scale? Will that conclusion be accepted or is the 'ACORN's fixing the election' meme already too far gone?"

MCCAIN: It Ain't Over Yet

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about what they perceive to be McCain's momentum, especially after yesterday's Gallup tracking poll showed Obama leading McCain by only 2 points among "traditional" likely voters:

  • RedState's Erick Erickson: "I've been saying privately for a few days...that my sense was a shift back toward John McCain. Today's Gallup poll, along with a host of other polls, shows that. Here is the safe rule for this election: ignore the numbers, but watch the trends. The trend had been toward Obama. It is now toward McCain. Joe the Plumber resonates with people. ACORN resonates with people. People are concerned and worried about the future. As a result, at this point in the campaign, these ancillary issues have a real impact. [...] We are behind. But the wind has shifted in our favor. Game on."
  • Power Line's John Hinderaker: "As Paul noted earlier today, John McCain is 'hanging around' in the Presidential race despite what would seem to be overwhelming odds. Maybe even doing a bit better than hanging around, as the current Gallup poll has Obama up by only two points, within the margin of error, among 'traditional likely voters.' [...] I think several developments may be helping McCain a bit. The emergence of ACORN as an issue is one. Voter fraud really angers people, for good reason, and most voters understand not only that ACORN is registering Democratic voters, but that Obama's relationship with ACORN is much deeper than he admits. [...] Another factor working in McCain's favor is the emergence of Joe the Plumber, who finally -- and more effectively than the McCain campaign has ever been able to do it -- put Obama where he belongs, in the long tradition of tax-raising, wealth-distributing liberals."
  • Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "This is a pro-growth, anti-tax country, and Obama is running on a high tax 'spread the wealth' European program. Rasmussen has the race down to four points, and there is extraordinary volatility in the country. The question about Obama's judgment is real and won't go away as the Ayers, Rezko, Wright and ACORN issues remain on the table and certainly tell us how Obama will staff his 3,000 appointments if he becomes president. [...] The Chicago Machine is already measuring the drapes, but there's a slight wind blowing in a new direction today, and both camps know it."
  • RedState's streetwise: "Gallup [is] showing Obama and McCain nearly tied. [...] Who knew that the recent investigations of ACORN would push the Obama percentage towards McCain's so soon!"

On the left side of the blogosphere, Think Progress's Matthew Yglesias offers his thoughts: "Right now we're looking at an average of 49.8 percent for Obama and 43.2 percent for McCain. That leaves 7 percent undecided. That's a very strong position for Obama -- he only needs something like 3 percent of the remaining undecideds to break his way in order to get over 50 percent and win the election. That should be easy to do. But since Obama's already almost at 50, the remaining pool of undecided voters is more conservative than is the general population, so it shouldn't ultimately be difficult for McCain to get most of them to go his way. Most isn't enough for McCain to win. Not nearly enough. But it is enough to make the race tighter and perhaps generate a 'McCain comeback' media narrative."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Obama's Embrace Of Tax Cuts

Ezra Klein:

"If you look at the Obama campaign, the basic argument has been...tax cuts. Their biggest economic policy is a massive tax cut. Their health care argument has largely been a tax-based attack on John McCain. Their stimulus proposal was a tax cut. Now, these are not Republican tax cuts: They're decidedly progressive. The Obama campaign is taking advantage of the unequal distribution of wealth in this country, which allows you to drop taxes sharply on the vast majority of Americans while raising them modestly on a small minority and not blow a hole in your budget. They've realized, in other words, that cutting taxes on most people is what folks want in a tax cut. Aggregate revenues don't have to go down. And when the top one percent control 20 percent of the country's income, you can make up a lot of revenue by taxing them a bit.

But tactically smart though this decision may be, it's not exactly the sort of thing that pleases the Gods of Public Policy. This country needs more in the way of tax revenues. The Republicans have turned honesty on that score into a form of electoral suicide. The Obama campaign -- and thus the Democrats more generally -- have basically thrown up their hands and said 'fine.' If Republicans are going to demagogue taxes and make irresponsible cuts a constant feature of elections, then the Democrats will prove that two can play at that game. Politically, that may be wise. But it's going to make the eventual reckoning much worse."

LEST WE FORGET: Man Dives Haphazardly Into Conversation Like Wounded Osprey

From The Onion:

"BLOOMFIELD, CT -- Local man Alan Heller, 37, hovered near a gathering of acquaintances for 30 seconds and then plunged haphazardly into their conversation, much like an osprey with a clipped wing and poor depth perception that spirals wildly into the sea. Heller reportedly saw the group engaged in a discussion, circled twice when he thought he recognized something on the surface of the conversation, and then dove in with the suddenness and lack of grace characteristic of severely injured diurnal sea hawks, asking those around him if they were indeed talking about popcorn. 'It was sad to watch,' said Amy Messer, who witnessed the pathetic event. 'Why didn't anyone put him out of his misery?'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 17, 2008 01:12 PM



Copyright 2007 by National Journal Group Inc.
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.