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It is now the Democrats’ turn to react. Joe the Plumber, the new and unlikely star of the American Presidential campaign, threw John McCain a much needed lifeline before the third and final Presidential debate on Oct. 15; and the veteran Senator did not let the opportunity go. It was all Joe the Plumber on Wednesday night at the Hofstra University, with economic issues and terrorism taking a back seat.
Joe the Plumber and Barack Obama got engaged in a tax cut discussion during the Democratic Presidential campaign at Ohio on 11th September. Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber from Toledo in Ohio, intended to buy a plumbing company that he expected would fetch him above the US $ 250,000 annually. Wurzelbacher was concerned that his endeavors would make him a candidate for a higher tax cut bracket, thus causing injury to his hard work for the last ten to fifteen years.
Tax analysts say that Joe’s premise was flawed, but with both parties willing to make the best of the media spotlights, nobody cared. It was only a matter of days before Joe the Plumber became the bona fide darling of the Republicans. He referred to Joe 21 times in the CBS Presidential debate on Wednesday. Sarah Palin towed the same line during her Presidential campaign at West Chester in Ohio. She thanked Joe for taking Obama to a point where he had to spell out his tax cut plans in unambiguous terms and plainly confess his ‘spread the wealth around’ strategy, which apparently had clear Socialist overtones.
None expected the Democrats to sit back and enjoy the show. Obama had a clear advantage over McCain in the earlier Presidential elections, and the Democrats were in no mood to let that advantage go. The problem for the Democrats, moreover, was that Joe the Plumber was becoming a de facto representative of the American working class in pursuit of the American dream. The working class forms the mainstay of Democratic support, and it was absolutely necessary to discount any concerns on their minds about Obama’s tax cut policies.
With Obama arguing the benefits of his proposed taxation policies on the televised debate, his associates took a more investigative turn, digging up the true identity of this questioner. Obama himself reacted in the defensive, stating he knew no plumber who makes more than a quarter million a year. Joe’s personal profile and professional history came under close scrutiny, the obvious fallout of being entangled in the celebrity spotlight. All Democratic websites, publications and press bytes got busy unearthing the obvious lapses in this self-made, hardworking, working class narrative that Joe the Plumber created for himself.
According to most Democratic findings, the new hero is neither Joe nor a plumber. His first name is not Joe, but Samuel; and he is not a licensed plumber. The mystery thickens when we get to know that he is not even from Ohio, but lived in Arizona and Alaska. The insistent Democrat campaigners also state that he has no right to question about business tax cuts when he himself has outstanding tax payments that amount to thousands of dollars.
However, one thing is certain that the Joe the Plumber debate has suddenly infused life in a Presidential campaign that till now looked like an easy runaway for Barack Obama. It has also further complicated the fate of a swing state like Ohio.
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