(BTW, Joe the Plumber isn’t registered to vote.)
Despite being mentioned 27 times during Wednesday’s debate, Joe The Plumber Wurzelbacher wasn’t the big news of the head-to-head between Barack Obama and John McCain. IMHO, it was the
final, no-mistakes-about-it repudiation of the presidency of George W. Bush by the man topping the ticket of the Republican party in 2008:MCCAIN: Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.
...OBAMA: Even FOX News disputes it, and that doesn’t happen very often when it comes to accusations about me. So the fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.
The man who voted with the current president 90% of the time just undermined his candidacy and illuminated why John McCain can’t close the deal. And the Obama campaign capitalized on it with this new ad:
McCAIN: Senator Obama, I am not President Bush.
ANNC: True…but you did vote with Bush 90% of the time.
ANNC: Tax breaks for big corporations and the wealthy
ANNC: But almost nothing for the middle class – same as Bush.
ANNC: Keep spending ten billion a month in Iraq while our own economy struggles – same as Bush.
ANNC: You may not be George Bush, but…
MCCAIN: I voted with the President over 90% of the time…higher than a lot of my even Republican colleagues.
Even McCain
, by his own statements during the debate, has had enough of Republican rule. Unfortunately, his campaign and party represents Einstein’s definition of insanity: McCain and the GOP plan to do the same thing over and over again—lower taxes, deregulate—and expect different results.
The country is coming to the realization that they have been pickpocketed by the party of
its own
prosperity, and now it’s being led not by the jocular frat boy you want to have a beer with, but an angry, nasty, erratic man of many mansions who is out of touch with the economic reality being experienced out there.
There were several other nuggets in the debate that were meaningful of course. More below the fold.