The "Joe the Plumber" Election

Who would have thought that the second most effective spokesman for the McCain campaign would be a plumber from Ohio:

John McCain may have found a blue-collar face to help him argue that no American -- not even the richest 5 percent -- should pay higher taxes.

"Joe The Plumber" has weighed in on Wednesday's presidential debate and he says that Barack Obama's tax plan "infuriates me."

"To be honest with you, that infuriates me," plumber Joe Wurzelbacher told Nightline's Terry Moran. "It's not right for someone to decide you made too much---that you've done too good and now we're going to take some of it back."

"That's just completely wrong," he added.

Wurzelbacher, who says no one from the McCain campaign got in touch with him before Wednesday, was a centerpiece of the third and final presidential debate.

The plumber's brush with fame began on Sunday when he confronted Barack Obama outside of Toledo, Ohio. Wurzelbacher challenged the Democratic candidate on his plan to raise taxes on the top five percent of earners -- a policy which would, by the Obama campaign's own estimation, mean higher taxes for 184,000 small businesses.

"I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year," Wurzelbacher told Obama. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"

Under Obama's plan, individuals making more than $200,000 per year, or couples making more than $250,000 per year, would pay higher taxes on income, capital gains, and dividends. Starting ten years from now, Obama supports an additional 2-4 percent tax on individual income above $250,000 per year to help shore up the Social Security system. ...

During his telephone interview with ABC News, the Ohio plumber argued that the government should not tax some more than others and argued that this principle should extend not only to Americans at his income-level but also to the world's richest man.

"I don't like it," said Wurzelbacher. "You know, me or -- you know, Bill Gates, I don't care who you are. If you worked for it, if it was your idea, and you implemented it, it's not right for someone to decide you made too much."

Joe has reportedly refused to say who he's going to vote for, but I think we can assume it won't be Obama. Although many in the pundit class are proclaiming Obama the winner of the debate once again, they're not part of the class of Americans who might feel the most intense pain of the Obama tax plan. That great group in the middle class might be more influenced by the sentiments of the plumber from Ohio than the "cool" demeanor of Obama.

UPDATE: How paranoid is the left? One commenter at Politico is suggesting that Joe was a Republican plant who purposely ambushed Obama to make him look bad.

UPDATE 2: Joe Biden challenges the credibility of Joe the Plumber on TV, misrepresenting his income and the point he was trying to make about the mysteries of Obama's tax plan.

UPDATE 3: The crucifixion of Joe the Plumber has begun.