Rundle 08: Meet Joe, sorry, Sam, the Plumber
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With the final debate over, and the election entering its final three week stage – it is worth remembering that there have been entire British and Australian campaigns of not much more than three weeks in toto – discussion and debate has focused all day not on whether McCain won the debate, but on whether he has anything left to campaign on. That he lost the debate is without question. Sixty per cent of respondents on all polls have declared Obama the winner to thirty per for Walnuts, and even when that is adjusted to allow for a 40%/30%/30% Democrat/Republican/Independent vote, it still turns out pretty well for him. Having blusteringly promised on radio that he would “whip [Obama’s] you-know-what” – what a great phrase to apply to a black man in a former slave society – McCain came out punchy as ever, while Obama, well, like an earlier candidate who knew about ass whuppings, floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. While McCain grunted and grimaced and interrupted, and, whenever attacked, wrote huge notes on a big pad like a bad schoolkid drawing enormous cock and balls, Obama leaned back and smiled, wasn’t afraid to reply to McCain’s questions – on Bill Ayers for example – and in general was so smoooooth brother, because he knew it was driving McCain’s prostate so far back up his ass that he was choking on it. McCain needed to roll out something new and he did – the now famous Joe the Plumber, the Ohio self-employed single father, who expressed his concern about Obama’s tax plans. McCain turned him into a small businessowner above the quarter million threshold of Obama’s tax cuts, and made him a reasonably effective centrepiece cum sock-puppet for his arguments that Obama’s tax plans would harm job creation. The only crimp in the whole higher-taxed small businessman Joe the plumber thang is that the business doesn’t come near the quarter mil earnings threshold, Joe doesn’t own it – he’s thinking of buying it from his employer – and he isn’t even a plumber, never having taking the contractors’ test. Oh and as the kiss-of-the-ass-whip, his name isn’t Joe, it’s Sam. Sam Joe the un-plumber has been besieged with media attention since the debate, though to his credit, he’s refused to say who he would vote for. If he could vote, that is – he’s not registered. His few statements indicated a straightforward blue collar Republican – “why should people who earn more pay a higher tax rate, stop hating America, Iraq has made us safer” – and refused to reveal how much he earned, though the Toledo Blade later established it as forty thousand a year. Same Joe, in other words, appears to be a decent person whose heartfelt belief in the fairness of America and that reward is somehow related to effort, must have the country club Republicans he votes for laughing till they hoik up their epiglotti. With his encounter with Obama, it appeared as if he had done them another fine service, giving McCain a motif he needed for the last part of the contest – if not enough to win, at least something to talk about. Now, McCain is in a right bind. With various Ohio trades boards investigating where and when Joe may have done work he wasn’t certified to perform, team GOP may have endangered his livelihood – and exposed the business he works for, to legal liability problems. With Joe himself a media figure in his own right, how can McCain ventriloquise him for another three weeks? The nightmare would be that Joe would rightly get irritated, turn round and say that John McCain doesn’t speak for him, and that whole tranche of remnant Nixon/Reagan/thick Democrats would be lost to the GOP. The problem is all the more tantilising when you consider what a gaffe Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark was, in the US, in Ohio, in the 2000s. Old Barry couldn’t have sounded more European if he’d said it in French, while sucking on a gitane. “Oue er geweng tur spreeed yer owulth lak menn yure fur ze – ow you say – leetle piggies.” Slap slap. “Owure eez yer wayfe owur meestress Ai wuld laike tur impregnate etc…” With the whole Democrat party having had drilled into them the “language framing” argument – “we’re going to make the tax system fairer for everyone”, how about – now is not the time for the Obama campaign to return to the sloppiness and lack of focus of late summer. Joe may not be as useful – oh, he also owes a grand in unpaid taxes too – as even twenty four hours ago, but it’s some sort of crack McCain might be able to haul himself up on. But McCain’s going to need that, because whatever advantages he’s gained, it’s now being generally argued he’ll lose double on the other stand out moment of the night, which was his wrapping airquotes around “the health of the mother” when talking about partial-birth abortion, this numerically tiny and fraught practice that has become some sort of gold-standard for acceptability to the American right. “Pro-abortionists have expanded that so much…” McCain growled. Quite possibly they have, but what is McCain suggesting – that laws should be passed which make it illegal to save the life of a woman who may die from carrying to term, or going into labour? The Christian right does believe that, of course, which is a measure of the cruelty and misogyny that lies at the base of their abortion obsession. And McCain seemed to give that remark a brutal heft coming from somewhere else deeper and more private. For anyone sane, it was a nasty moment. For anyone who’s had, or loves someone who’s had, a sudden heart murmur, a haemorrhage, or half a dozen other things during pregnancy, that weren’t serious but could have been, it’s suddenly personal – John McCain would have voted to kill me/my partner/my daughter, etc. That’s going to decide a bunch of waverers right there. But above all what could be worse than air quotes around “health of the mother”? Saturday Night Live would think twice about putting that on any conservative character. Is there a more contemptuous gesture, a signal staged twitch around a phrase expressing an ocean of pain, fear, guilt and more for millions of people directly or otherwise? I very much doubt the Obama campaign will use it – their post election ads focussed on McCain’s pro-Bush voting record, and they’ll stay on the economy and health care – but you would have to believe that 527 groups, MoveOn et al, will consider running hard on it. The only downside would be the possibility of scoring a few more base votes of McCain, but Palin would appear to have guaranteed those already. Though the debate was widely held to put McCain out for the count, Obama has already started leaning on his supporters to keep up the pressure, warning a New York fundraiser “not to be complacent” and “remember New Hampshire” ie the in-the-bag primary, two hundred and thirty years ago, he lost to Hillary. The battle in a US election at this stage, is to get out those registered, Mickey Mouse, the Dallas Cowboys, the kid who signed up 72 times n all – both to actually get them to follow through, and/or make sure they know that registering is not, in itself, voting. Though the numbers are very good for Obama, they have to be to defeat any residual Bradley effect, Florida-style November surprise etc etc. McCain’s last chance – and it is more than a merely formal one – is to use the “share the wealth” argument as a key point of difference between himself and Obama, and portray that as the American versus un-American divide. Even with the huge deficit he’s facing in ad spending, that may be sufficient, with hard work to wear things down. Stranger things have happened. Stranger things have happened this morning. After Richard Nixon, will John McCain be the second candidate to turn to a bunch of fake plumbers to ensure victory? |
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14 Comments
As I made clear in my posts, spreading the wealth around does not mean socialism, it means ameliorating the severe and growing wealth disparities in the USA.
JamesK loves to lap up every lie and distortion that the McCain/Palin team dishes out. I expect he will soon be posting a yap about how Obama supports infanticide - a lie currently being pushed in McCain robocalls.
Fortunately, there are not enough lying fools of his kind in the USA to get McCain over the line.
Jeremy Henderson ….”avaristic”?
Are you attempting (albeit rather pathetically) to make an argument against Capitalism or are you making an argument for Socialism?
There are quite a number of writers and thinkers who have done both and are known to have much more than “an ounce of intelligence”. There also are fine intellects who have argued a contrary position. I have cited but one.
Your intellect though, Jeremy Henderson, is so very clearly on the lightweight side of the scales and all opposing views to yours amount to “quite simply the promotion of greed and selfishness”.
Take heart there were leaders in history with views as simplistically left wing as yours.
But none of them were really very successful……..
A basic tenet of Socialism is “redistribution of wealth” or if you like: “spread the wealth around” but this is a fundamental misnomer as Milton Friedman famously argued.
These policies have failed repeatedly but this toxic drivel keeps rising to the surface. It is the politics of envy and cheap populism.
Even to The Dems, ‘socialism’ is still a dirty word and traditionally never plays well in the US but now is the optimum time to try it yet again if you were in denial or truly a socialist.
No surprise to see David Sanderson “still trying to figure out why “spread the wealth around” is such an appalling thing to say”
It’s good to read an article that gives a realistic view of the outcome of the debate. I am so sick of reading reports of how McCain “came out swinging”, and scored more punches but just lost overall. To anyone with a brain and any sense of decency, Obama simply flattened him. I was angry at McCain during the first two debates, but this time Obama was so dominant that there was no ned for anger - just laughter, rolling eyes and pity!
I must admit to having had the same reaction as David - how could anyone reasonable object to the notion of spreading the wealth? Thank you, Nick, your comments really start to make some sense of it though. I must say that when reading the comments of McCain supporters on YouTube posts, they do demonstrate that combination of abusive anger and extraordinary stupidity in supporting policies which are clearly damaging them. When reading them, it gives a hint as to how they could have elected Bush twice!
One wonders why David Sanderson does not use the capital ‘W’ in his oft used ‘we’ …………… perhaps the beginning of insight?
Nah!
Being accused by the often overtly arrogant and ignorant David Sanderson of being “peevish” would be something akin to accusing the author of ‘Das Kapital” of being a neo-con. You are no “nonentity” David Sanderson but a f-ckwit nonetheless
There is something in what you say but if there was not some desire for greater equity then social welfare programs would never have been created. In a previous post you indicated that you had been out of the USA for around 30 years - enough time for the supposedly immutable national soul to undergo several permutations.
Such a permutation, and perhaps the largest we have seen in the past thirty years, may well be underway now. Many Americans may be envisaging their lives falling through the widening cracks under their feet and would willingly embrace more government intervention that sought to protect them from the more feared outcomes. These interventions would have to be done with a sensitive and light hand and clearly Obama has been doing his best to seem like the man who could be trusted not to go too far or heavy-handedly down the interventionist track. But the smaller government mantra of McCain is exactly the wrong message for the current mood of the electorate.
JamesK , you love to go on about other people’s supposed lack of intellect and success in life. You do so in a manner that suggests a desperately insecure personality. Perhaps it is time that you showed off those intellectual and life achievements of which you are so proud.
Otherwise, we will have to conclude that you are a peevish and spiteful nonentity.
Of course, JamesK, the alternative to “spreading the wealth around” is quite simply the promotion of greed and selfishness. Surely anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see that the current financial crisis is fundamentally a culmination of those values espoused so strongly by Thatcher, Friedman and Reagan, amongst others. Ironically, while opposing any form of wealth distribution to the underclasses, those champions of “free enterprise” are desperate for government (i.e. mug taxpayers) financial assistance in their own time of need.
It is sad to see how, despite all the evidence to the contrary, those with avaristic tendencies refuse to open their eyes to either the reality of what has occurred, or their own responsibilities to their fellow humans.
Very disappointing James. I was hoping, against all the evidence, that I would be impressed.
oh, i quite agree with your comment about social welfare programs, but most of them were set up years ago, and in the past 30 years many of them have been whittled away until they’re faint ghosts of what they used to be- based on the ideology that no one should be “given” anything, and if they don’t get a job, they don’t deserve it.
the current message from mccain- many people now see the folly of a generation of “small (read almost non-existent) government” working in greater social welfare programs for more of the population. there have been change sto the national soul in the past 30 years, but the basic premise still obtains- social welfare programs are seen as nearly “communistic” in intent. what is occurring now, as a result of the past eight years with a republican government that was so insistent on pushing it’s most extremist programs and policies that it’s all come crashing down around their ears all at once, and more people are waking up to that fact and may thus be giving mccain’s message the flick. of those who want change, i think many want more than a light hand- they want more of a sledghammer…
only the next two weeks will tell how many more voters individual psyches are changed enough for them to choose another path… there are record numbers of voters who’ve been encouraged to actually register to vote in this election, and with the current financial situation, brought about solely by US banks and lending institutions, it may be the lever required to pry them out of their lethargy and disinterest to actually go out and exercise their hard won franchise… i’ve certainly been doing what i can here in australia to get the word out through different websites and chatrooms to expat yanks to register to get an absentee ballot, or to complete a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot and send it off as soon as possible… so it will be interesting to see just how many people actually get out and vote in this election.
Why is it “greedy” for a hypothetical small businessman to want to keep more of his own money, but not “greedy” for Obama to want to confiscate more of it, and not “greedy” to want someone else’s wealth spread around to you?
So Joe the Plumber is a bad guy? He’s not running! Obama still voluntarily stated that he “wants to spread the wealth around”, but there will be much less wealth to spread around if the government confiscates it from small business owners who hire many American workers.
I am still trying to figure out why “spread the wealth around” is such an appalling thing to say. I don’t think I will ever figure out why it supposedly sounds more natural in a parody French accent. Rundle’s preferred phrasing reeks of political jargon and phrasemaking but generally politicians do well if they can express themselves more colloquially in casual encounters with voters.
When McCain harped on the phrase during the debate he did so with an air of desperation, trying to draw out a secret socialist agenda that simply wasn’t there. All McCain succeeded in doing is reminding voters that Obama stands for a more equitable America, an idea and an ideal that has been growing in urgency and relevance as the crisis rolls on.
now david- see, the thing you don’t seem to be able to grasp in that basic statement: “that obama stands for a more equitable america”… is that any rational, logical, THINKING person would look at the campaign and what’s been said and think, “well, what exactly is WRONG with that idea?”, and you’d be right- it sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it?
the problem here is quite simple: you’re not an american (i am making a big assumption here, but i think i’m might be safe in doing so). i AM an american, though i left 30 years ago, so let me give you some insight. what americans have never been able to grasp or accept, or relate to or appreciate is that “sharing the wealth” in a way to make things work better, FOR EVERYONE, is not what they have been taught to believe in that weird, twisted, 12th dimensionally contorted idea from another world that means IT ISN’T AMERICAN, IT’S COMMUNISTICABLEISH! …or something equally weird in the collective “mind” that passes for the average person’s understanding of things…
you see, you and i know it’s actually not such a bad idea to help give everyone a leg up to establish themselves to get an education or training (college/training costs people so much money many just can’t afford it). you’ve got to be dirt poor to get into any govt. scheme, so the average man/woman can’t benefit from it. all they hear, and all conservatives have always told them, is THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO TAKE MAH MONEY AWAY AND GIVE IT TO A NO GOOD CRACK WHORE/PRICK SLOB WITHOUT A JOB WHO NEVER PAID TAXES IN THEIR LIFE AND THAT AIN’T RAHT!. you see?
the other thing about the middle-class “average joe” is that s/he actually believes he’s a rockerfeller or that he’ll be one “one day”. while the conservatives slowly white-ant his hard won social services, they fill him up with ideology that tells him no one really deserves it and should earn it, while the richest in society (most voting republican) laugh all the way to the bank. WEIRD, eh?