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Joe Mania
JOE MANIA....A Norfolk station asked John McCain today why he wasn't doing better in Virginia. Here's his answer:
"We're doing much better actually, there's a poll out today that shows we're within about three so we're moving up and moving up fast. And look, Joe the Bomb — uh — Joe the Plumber turned the whole thing around."
The comical part of this is that McCain almost called him "Joe the Bomber." Ha ha. But the genuinely weird part of it is McCain's bizarre embrace of Joe. It's one thing to use the guy as a campaign prop, but to tell the world that it was Joe who "turned the whole thing around"? That Joe is his personal "role model"? You gotta be kidding. Those aren't things you'd want to admit even if they were true, are they?
Joe is a perfect mascot for the Republicans, a fellow who wants to be the big dog and run the show but can't be bothered to learn the ropes enough to get himself licensed. Or to pay taxes. Last I heard he's planning to run for Congress now.
Don't forget that McCain referred to Palin as his 'soulmate' shortly after adding her to the ticket. My take is that McCain doesn't realize how badly his behavior during the campaign has damaged his brand, and so he thinks he has sufficient credibility to say absolutely ludicrous things like this, and that will give Joe or Sarah the respect and gravitas McCain himself once had.
In the Republican universe, Wurzelbacher makes sense. He says the correct crazy things on cue to reinforce all the oxygen-starved brains in the Republican bubble. McCain's invocations of Wurzelbacher, in Republican base terms, make perfect sense. What else is McCain going to do at this point, go for the rational vote?
All part of the faux populism
What is it about Republicans and plumbers? That was the Richard Nixon's Watergate squad, as I recall.
Would someone tell McCain to go take a shit...so Joe the Plumber will have something to do...
McCain said that Palin is the foremost expert on energy in the USA. He said that election fraud by ACORN might be the end of Democracy as we know it. He said he would run an honorable campaign.
Why would you be surprised by anything that comes out of his mouth?
Still trying to figure out why the Obama campaign allowed the Joe phenomenon to happen.
For McCain to promote a guy who complained about the $280,000 tax bracket as representative of the average voter ("you are all Joe the Plumbers"), and get away with it, is hard to swallow.
I don't think he was starting to say "Joe the Bomber." I think his poor old brain was mixing up "Obama" and "Joe the Plumber" and the other thing he's been saying so much, "Joe the Biden." And it came out "Joe the Bama." Old gray matter, tired from so much repetition and full of the specter of Obama.
That's what I heard anyway.
That would obviously be Joe the Pipe-Bomber.
JS, obama is going to win the election, likely by a significant margin. how did mccain "get away" with anything regarding "joe the plumber?"
if he wants to babble on (which, frankly, is what i think many people are now convinced he's doing) about his hero, let him babble on: he has no serious credibility left.
It's ironic that the republican forerunner would lean on a plumber in a time of crisis - McCain is full of shit and his campaign is all washed up.
howard, more than 80% of the people are saying in polls that the country is in the wrong path. And, in a September Gallup poll, "63% of voters expressed concern that McCain would pursue policies that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued." And we are in a finacial meltdown.
With this background, Obama's current 51% in the polls is not a good as it should be. Too many people were swayed by McCain's attacks, as happened in 2004.
It will be great to celebrate a Democratic victory. But a victory will not prove that this was the best campaign.
Does anyone else think it's skeevy how McCain has this hero worship fetish? Gen Petraeus isn't just a good general, isn't just a competent general, but is the best general ever, better than anyone else has ever been at generalling. Joe the Plumber is the greatest common man ever, better than any other common man, the best common man ever. Sarah Palin is the greatest energy expert, no one else has ever had as much energy expertise as she has, better than any other energy expert ever. No sense of proportion. Meh.
No one thinks Joe the Plumber is a real phenomenon except people who were a lock for McCain or should have been.
In a word, Joementum.
Joe the Plumber is a good example of a poor campaign! If it wasn't for diehard Republicans and I mean that Respectfully, McCain wouldn't even be in the race!I am an Independent-I liked Romney and Huckabee and I sincerely believe that if that had been the ticket, it would be an extremely close race. I am still wondering how we got into Iraq and now I have to wonder how McCain got to be the Republican Candidate for President-The really scary part is that I strongly suspect the two are connected!
Remember when this was a joke?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48941
If this energy-sapping campaign doesn't change McCain (for the worse) forever, I'll be surprised. He's had to pretzel himself from everything he seemed to stand for and will now say anything. And the press hasn't called him on it. He's become another delusional politician. And he's old.
All reasons he shouldn't ever become President.
I'm sure just about anyone could sit down for a night of beers with Joe and realize that adopting him as your hero or personal role model would be pretty ridiculous.
What else is McCain going to do at this point, go for the rational vote?
I wouldn't mind if he comes begging, but I already voted for his younger opponent :-)
If there's a clearer case of Joementum, I'd like to see it.
The real concern (for me at least, albeit I'm prone to worry) is that every campaign from now to the foreseeable future will include legions of similar yahoos trying to be the next Mr. W__.
MrsT: I like your analysis, but my grey matter has been making these kinds of synaptic cross circuits for as long as I can remember, and I'm barely more than half the Senator's age (OK more than a few years).
Joe the Bomb--, er, Plumber and his 15 minutes...a dancing moose "shot" on live TV in the presence of a boogeying vice presidential candidate...yes, these are the images of the 2008 campaign that will resonate through history, right up there with the 1964 "daisy" ad. And 100 years from now, people will look at this and try to imagine the surreal ridiculousness of it all.
Even if Joe were exactly what McCain seems to think he is - a poor plumber trying to get by on $250,000 a year - one would think that people would really hate the guy. Who, besides lawyers, is less popular than a tradesman who makes five or six times what most people do by profiteering on their leaky infrastructure?
Maybe he meant Joe was "the bomb," like we used to say in the 90s.
It's easy to see why a Republican candidate for President would rely on a plumber--'cause it worked so well back in '72.
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Does anyone else think it's skeevy how McCain has this hero worship fetish?
===
Yes, I know I do. I think it's odd how quickly McCain turns to other people to justify his candidacy. Obama says "these are my ideas, vote for me"; McCain says "these people support me, vote for me."
I would think a 72-year-old man who has spent decades in DC would be more willing to say, "I think this a good idea because my experience tells me this is a good idea."
Joe the Plumber is the reductio ad absurdium of this theme in McCain's campaign. The "role model" line was just embarrassing. I'm Joe the Plumber's age and if a 72-year-old war veteran Senator (hell, any Senator) called me his role model I would just feel bad for the guy and change the subject.
I also find the "X the Y" trope to be a wee bit condesceding. If I had walked up to Sen. McCain in 2006 and said, "How's it going, John the Senator?" I'm sure I would have received the icy thousand-yard stare from hell. And rightfully so, because calling him "John the Senator" is disrespectful. "Joe the Plumber," "Tito the Builder" - that's what rich people call the help.
But what do I know, I'm just a socialist who thinks everyone should receive small courtesies like, um, using their real names.
Just asking, but would a liberal ever hold an average American up as a role model? Would a liberal ever pick a man who works with his hands as a role model?
Obviously Drum has no respect for Joe the Plumber. Okay. But where does all the resentment come from?
Just asking, but would a liberal ever hold an average American up as a role model?
Posted by: Jose Chung
Yes.
I am a liberal and these are a few of my role models:
My mother and father are my role models for feeding, dressing, and housing 4 kids on less than $30,000 a year, far far below Joe the Plumbers projected income.
I hold my sister up as a role model for putting herself through college, first in our family.
I hold my grandfather up as a role model because of the ships his scarred and weathered hands have crafted.
I hold one of my co-workers up as a role model for taking care of herself and working, even in a wheelchair.
I hold up Barack Obama, a man from humble beginnings, as a role model for everything this great nation was, is, and will be.
Be they Republican or Democrat, these people are worthy of my respect and exhibit strengths from which I have learned.
Perhaps it is time to let go of the stereotypical generalities you have been fed about other human beings and see past the voter cards to who they really are as people.
"I think it's odd how quickly McCain turns to other people to justify his candidacy. Obama says 'these are my ideas, vote for me'; McCain says 'these people support me, vote for me.'"
We all use wellknown people's expressed viewpoints in support of our own arguments. But I think with authoritarian personalities, this is what they rely on almost exclusively. It's much more important to them who believes something than empirical facts.
Back in 2004-05, after it started to become obvious that the Iraq was wasn't going well, and that there really were no WMDs, an argument I saw wingers post over and over again was quotes from various Democrats that could be twisted to support the Iraq war. Clinton, Albright, various congress people, etc. The fact that these people recognized that Saddam was a VERY BAD MAN, and the fact that Clinton had authorized some limited bombing, and the fact that these people had expressed a belief in Saddam having WMDs, seemed to the wingers to be an argument that we libs should shut up with our criticizing.
It never seemed to occur to the wingnuts that what these quotes really proved was that these famous people, supposedly in the know, had been wrong. Instead, the thinking seemed to be that since these people had supported the war, or at least strong action, this validated those who supported the war, and that we liberals were totally presumptuous to express different opinions. Also that because some prominent Democrat had expressed support, this meant that we had to cease criticizing and bow down to the prominent Democrat's supposedly superior knowledge. Seeking knowledge independently and coming to conclusions on that evidence, is a foreign idea to authoritarians. It's like "God said it, I believe it, end of story!" This way of thinking has baffled me since the time I got into, say, junior high.