Why McCain's story of Joe the Plumber backfired (Newsday)

[struggle4progress]

Ellis Henican
October 19, 2008

... Joe the Plumber .... kept talking. And he talked some more. Before he was done, the whole world knew:

Joe doesn't have a plumber's license (his employer has one, so he can work as a plumber). No one really calls him Joe. He owes back taxes. He has no plan to buy the business he said he was buying. It grosses less than half of what he claimed it does. And the boss hadn't agreed to sell.

Plus, the whole idea that Joe was an undecided middle-minded voter? That got harder to sustain once he started calling Obama a socialist and explaining how evil he thought Social Security was.

Uh, that's enough, Joe. Or Sam. Or whatever your name is. Thank you very much for participating here ...

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyhen195890107oct19,0,5194699.column

[opihimoimoi]

1. McLoser keeps picking them.....why??

[struggle4progress]

2. Republicans have some theory of "the President as empty suit and source of distraction"

Every winning coalition is something of a mish-mash

Nixon's Southern strategy required the Republicans to assemble an alliance of laissez-faire corporatists and racist yahoos. The cement for this alliance has always been a nonsensical blather that serves two ends: (1) it convinces cynical manipulators that the campaign understands advertising techniques necessary to manipulate the public and that the candidate if victorious will be able to distract attention, screening the real details of the administration from public scrutiny; and (2) the blather includes enough codewords to excite support from the yahoos

Reagan blathered bilge for eight years, and many folk wasted their energy responding to the distraction; meanwhile, behind the scenes, his appointees did what they wanted without the spotlight of attention. W uses the same strategy: his incoherent and inconsistent jabber has distracted much of the nation from the crimes of his regime

Palin was chosen because she would excel as an air-headed empty-suit distraction. "Joe"-the-Plumber's briefly famous because the campaign could grab a word here and a sentence fragment there, to excite the yahoos to wave plungers and shout "Communists!" at reporters. The lesson is simply that McCain would "govern" as Reagan did, using soundbites to create little controversies that distract attention from whatever his administration actually does

<edit:grammar>

[opihimoimoi]

6. Pub Tool Chest includes: Distraction, Distortion, Dishonesty, Denigration, etc

[mrcheerful]

3. Reality is the republicon voters are exactly like Joe TP

No matter how much they complain about taxes being taken out of their pay checks, somehow they feel the rich must be paying alot more and they claim its unfair. Pretty much like Joe/Sam, Social security failed and regardless that their 401K's are pretty much wiped out, they know that any day now the 401K will bounce back and they will be able to walk the shores of distant exotic lands in their golden years.

Never mind none of them did the math that shows a 401K of $60,000 only yields a poultry $400 a month return. Never mind the fact that SS is the only government agency that brings in more then it spends on the people it was intended to be spent on, if presidents hadn't started using it to off set the countries running in the red. Nope to Joe and the rest, you can trust Wall street but you can't trust Washington. So Wall street is their hero and the CEO's are going to give them a hand up to the gated land of the rich.

Pretty much like Joe, who has no real plans nor the credit needed to buy into the great american dream of vast luxuries, they know they are going to get there right up to the day they die of simple curable disease's because at this moment in time their health is fine so because they are god fearing it will remain fine all their lives. They live on toxic waste dumps, god protects them from the toxic sewage seeping up in their yards. They live next to chemical plants that spews air born wastes down on their heads, god protects them. Their neighbors are dying from diseases caused by toxins and blow it off as the neighbor wasn't god fearing enough. So health care isn't a concern.

Why does McShit pick these losers? Because they are a dime a dozen and its easy to find a Joe in vast numbers. These are the idiots who learned to repeat in school instead of questioning what they were being told as truth, many are very good at math, numbers don't lie, they never learned that numbers can be manipulated. Their grasp of knowledge is questionable as most aren't curios enough to actually think problems through, they leave that up to people they consider wiser then themselves.

Notice how they all say government and leaders can't be trusted, yet when their party says John is your man, they blindly follow. These are the american voters out there, they dream instead of plan. When their dreams don't come through, they drop on their knees and pray harder, then if that fails, they try to enact moral laws because their dreams aren't coming to them, so its the godless immoral country's fault not a personal failing. They blame minorities, women, illegals, poor and everyone else who they think stops them from getting their just rewards. Why? Because someone got an unfair advantage they felt they were entitled to, they are right but they are looking in the wrong place, they should be looking up instead of down.

[opihimoimoi]

5. No shit, I have to agree w the premise...The GOP Lemmings are in turmoil

Hardly know where to turn to....lost and bewildered....

[snake in the grass]

9. He counts on the stupidity and...

...the gullibility of his constituents. The Republicans have always relied on the loud-mouthed, the bigots, the greedy, and the downright dim-witted, i.e. the low-hanging fruit, to win elections.

[opihimoimoi]

10. TONS OF EVIDENCE SUPPORTS YOUR COMMENTS...oops sorry for shoutin

I just call them THE EASILY FOOLED

[bemildred]

4. Worst run campaign in many decades.

Dukakis and Dole now have someone to feel sorry for.

[Doctor_J]

7. It was a FAIL because it was completely insincere, just like every other

McSame campaign ploy. The man has no moral compass at all.

[CitizenPatriot]

8. McCain should have read his history

we already said no to McCarthyism.

His actions and those of his running mate make me physically sick. Employing terrorist techniques to win an election while claiming yourselves to be the only "Americans", shoving false memes and bibles down American's throats while stabbing people in the back and being a despicable liar (not Christian choices), lying about his own record, presenting Palin as a viable option for Presidency, the list goes on and on.