The McCain campaign is so predictable and so shameless.
First, McCain drags this random “Joe the Plumber” into the spotlight to do McCain’s lying for him. Then, when the left responds by pointing out that “Joe the Plumber” is lying, McCain tries to malign the left for victimizing Joe.
Let’s review what McCain had to say at the presidential debate Wednesday:
I would like to mention that a couple of days ago, Senator Obama was out in Ohio and he had an encounter with a guy who’s a plumber. His name is Joe Wurtzelburger (sic). Uh, Joe wants to buy the business that he’s been in for all these years, worked 10, 12 hours per day, and he wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your (Obama’s) tax plan, and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes. You were going to put him in a higher tax bracket which was going to increase his taxes, which was going to cause him not to be able to employ people. Which Joe was trying to realize the American dream.
These are just lies. Joe the Plumber did not look at Obama’s tax plan and discover he would pay higher taxes under Obama’s plan. Joe would pay less under Obama’s plan. So Joe the Plumber doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Obama’s plan would not prevent Joe the Plumber from employing anyone.
Obviously, we can forgive Joe the Plumber for being ignorant of Obama’s tax plan. Joe the Plumber is a plumber, not a policy analyst. But McCain can be held responsible for making Joe the Plumber’s false, ignorant statements the focal point of his campaign. It’s disappointing and contemptible when a candidate lies about policy – but it’s far more disgusting when a candidate exploits the ignorance of an “ordinary Joe” to advance his own lies, effectively throwing relatively innocent civilians into the line of campaign fire.
Even Joe admits that McCain was lying during the debate, according to a CBS news report.
Wurzelbacher said Obama’s tax plan wouldn’t affect him right now, because he doesn’t make $250,000. “But I hope someday I’ll make that,” he said.
“If you believed (Obama), I’d be receiving his tax cuts,” Wurzelbacher said. “But I don’t look at it that way. He’d still be hurting others.”
Of course, we already know that McCain is a disgusting candidate. The question is, will it work? Since the debate, the media has pointed out that Joe is not a licensed plumber and owes back taxes. Here’s what the McCain campaign has said recently:
“The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe,” Mr. McCain said. “People are digging through his personal life, and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.”
(Update) And here is what some guy at Pajamas Media had to say about the assault on Joe:
I realize it’s all about winning at this point. But someone has to ask: What has happened to the Democratic Party?
It seems like just yesterday that the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy was talking about income equality and civil rights and worker protections and going to bat for the little guy, the blue collar laborer, the everyday Joe the Plumber.
Now, the well-to-do elites who run the Democratic Party — and their surrogates — greet these people with brickbats. They insult them, talk down to them, and even try to destroy them. Isn’t that the sort of war on the working class that Democrats are always accusing those greedy and heartless Republicans of waging?
Who, specifically, is going after Joe the Plumber with a brickbat? Who is talking down to Joe the Plumber? Who is trying to destroy Joe the Plumber? Is this writer referring to people like me, who point out that Joe’s claim that he would pay more taxes under Obama’s tax plan was WRONG — and that Joe is either ignorant of Obama’s plan or lying?
The right wing is using cultural divisions to create an environment where John McCain can repeat a false claim by an “ordinary Joe” like Joe the Plumber and when Democrats challenge that claim, they can be accused of insulting and even violently attacking middle class Americans.
What Dems need is to find a guy with an all-American (in other words, white male Christian) sounding name and an all-American sounding job to say something sleazy and false about McCain. Then, when the Republicans try to defend themselves against these false, sleazy charges, we can just accuse them of beating up on poor old Kevin the Farmer or whatever.
How about this: John McCain voted against benefits for Iraq War veterans.
Wait! That won’t work! It’s true!
To me the bigger overall issue is why the media has torn this guy apart. I have no problem with the media attacking McCain. Anything they dig up on him, in my view is ok. But, to go after a private citizen and humiliate him to the entire country is just not right. The guy asked a question, then gave an opinion. What is wrong with that? And I don’t blame the Obama campagin for this; this was all done by the media.
Sure, McCain brought up Joe the Plumber in debate and both canadidates discussed him, but I beleive there are other ways for the media to defend Senator Obama’s tax plan.
Imagine if the media dug into your past and discovered some things that you aren’t necessarily proud of. How would you feel about that?
Comment by rbates — October 18, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
rbates, I completely sympathize with your point.
I do not feel good about attacking an ordinary citizen like Joe the Plumber. But John McCain dragged Joe the Plumber into this debate the other night. McCain associated himself with Joe the Plumber’s assertions, and exploited Joe the Plumber to state as fact that Joe the Plumber examined Obama’s tax plan and saw that Obama’s plan would raise Joe’s taxes, preventing Joe from buying a business and employing people.
I certainly don’t blame you for caring about Joe the Plumber as a matter of general principle — and God knows there are details about my life that would be embaressing if exposed on national television or on a public blog.
But when Joe the Plumber makes a claim that becomes a central issue in a campaign affecting hundreds of millions of Americans — we have to weigh the unpleasantness of embaressing Joe against the consequences for millions of Americans if McCain can successfully manipulate the American people into assuming that Joe knows what he’s talking about. There’s more at stake in this election than the reputation of Joe the Plumber. The idea that Obama’s tax plan would hurt Joe the Plumber is a powerful idea — and that’s why it’s important for us to be exposing it as a lie. That may hurt Joe, but it will hurt America far more if we let the lie stand unchallenged.
If you want to hold someone responsible for putting “Joe the Plumber” in the spotlight, why not blame John McCain?
McCain could have avoided putting Joe the Plumber in this position if McCain had made his point in more general terms — by saying, for example, that many plumbers would suffer under his plan. But that would obviously be a lie. How many plumbers do you know that make $250,000 a year? To make his lie stick (at least for a few hours), McCain pointed to a specific example. So it is absolutely necessary to refer to that specific example in order to rebut the argument.
Anyway, I thank you for pointing out that in this instance, the media has been responsible for telling the truth to the American people — and not the Obama campaign, which has chosen to give Joe the Plumber a little leeway. I’m not saying Obama is some kind of moral hero for not going after Joe the Plumber — it would have been politically stupid for Obama to start victimizing a poor plumber, as Obama well knows.
But somebody has to tell the truth. And I’m pretty sure Joe the Plumber makes more money than I do every year, and I’d expect to be treated the same way he is being treated if a presidential campaign suddenly hinged on statements I had made.
Comment by Ian — October 18, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
I think we need to make a distinction between examining Joe’s claims regarding Obama’s tax plan — which are totally fair game — and Joe as an individual. Joe as an individual is completely uninteresting to me, unless he turns out to be a McCain plant or lying about his own situation. But if Joe makes a false claim, and McCain wants to pretend that claim is true, then that claim needs to be scrutinized, perhaps with reference to Joe’s socioeconomic position.
That said, many on the right — like Michelle Malkin — who lament the liberal media’s evil scrutiny of Joe (“Joe the Plumber Derangement Syndrome” is what she calls it) were at the forefront of similar evil scrutiny when it came to the family of Graeme Frost and S-CHIP.
Comment by Lee — October 18, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
I understand your point about scrutinizing Joe the Plumber’s situation, but I just think it could have been done differently. I mean, who isn’t off limits now?
Like you said McCain is also to blame for this becuase he brought up Joe’s specific situation. What he should have done is just mention him in general terms. That being said I still don’t like the fact that the media has dug into this guy’s personal life and exposed it to the rest of the country. I don’t think anyone deserves that kind of treatment, especially when all you did was ask a Presidential candidate a question.
Comment by rbates — October 18, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
I’d like to know more about Graeme Frost and S-CHIP.
That said, the only important point to make about Joe the Plumber is that he was WRONG when he said he’d pay more in taxes under Obama’s plan, and McCain was also WRONG when he said the same thing.
The problem is, you can’t accuse an ordinary guy like Joe the Plumber of being WRONG (even when Joe the Plumber is clearly WRONG) without being accused of somehow disrespecting Joe the Plumber and all hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding middle class Americans just like Joe.
I can hear the right-wing whackos firing back: “How dare you say Joe the Plumber is wrong! Are you saying Joe the Plumber is too stupid to understand Obama’s tax plan? Are you saying Joe the Plumber is lying? How dare you dirty urban wine-sipping liberals make those terrible accusations against an ordinary hard-working middle-class American like Joe! How dare you!” (see McCain quote above)
That’s why people like me feel obligated to point out in advance that Joe may be a hard-working midwesterner, but he is NOT law-abiding, he is NOT tax-paying, and he IS either ignorant or lying!
Sorry, Joe. It’s nothing personal. But I feel it is my patriotic duty to point out that your now-famous concerns about Obama’s tax plan have nothing to do with Obama’s tax plan, and everything to do with your ignorance, stupidity, or deceitfulness. These aren’t “political attacks” aimed at Joe. They are an effort to expose the McCain campaign’s lies.
So I agree with Lee on this one.
Comment by Ian — October 18, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
rbates, I agree that the scrutiney of Joe could have been done differently. But by whom? Was it the New York Times that crossed the line? Was it Fox News? Which details are legitimate and which should be off-limits?
Comment by Ian — October 18, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Honestly Ian, I don’t think that it has been one particular news source more than the other. I think they have all covered equally in my opinion.
I think pretty much all details about his personal life are off limits. I think it would be fair for people to state that Obama’s tax plan would not effect him, but I don’t think the nation needs to know what this guy makes. Just my opinion and maybe I am being over sensitive about all of this, but I am just trying to place myslef in this guy’s position. One thing for sure – I will never ask a Presidential candidate a question.
Comment by rbates — October 18, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
If I were a journalist covering this year’s election, and one of the candidates used the situation of someone like Joe as an example of why his opponent’s plans were not good, it would be very hard for me not to write about that someone.
It’s a no-win situation from the perspective of the journalist. By bringing up the Joe-like person, the politician in question has turned the situation of Joe and people like him into a campaign issue. But I agree that Joe’s personal life should be off limits, especially if that’s Joe’s preference.
Comment by Lee — October 18, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
rbates, (again, I’m very sympathetic to your position) but I don’t see how Joe’s income can be off-limits when his income is absolutely central to the point McCain is using Joe to make.
Listen to what John Kass wrote in a column about Joe the Plumber in the Chicago Tribune:
“Tax experts were consulted and said that even if Joe could afford to buy the plumbing business, he shouldn’t worry about Obama’s taxes. But I grew up in a small family business, and saw what my father went through to pay this tax and that tax and the other tax and then try to pay our bills, so listening to experts reassure small business owners that they shouldn’t worry when Democrats may control all of Washington made me want to laugh my head off.”
Kass is trying to make the argument that Joe the Plumber would pay higher taxes under Obama’s tax plan. His argument is based NOT on facts (which say the opposite) but on stupid prejudices (Dems always raise taxes on working people), faulty logic (my dad struggled to pay his taxes, so Obama’s tax plan will hurt Joe the Plumber), and mindless emotion (“laughing his head off”).
Faced with this, the media simply must report on Joe’s income. Otherwise, a sense of propriety will allow stupid prejudice, faulty logic and mindless emotion to trump the truth.
Comment by Ian — October 19, 2008 @ 10:52 am