Obama campaign & media bash Joe the Plumber

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Has anyone noticed how Joe Biden, the Obama campaign and the media in general has suddenly attacked the poor blue-collar plumber named Joe, made famous during the presidential debates?

I've been a registered Democrat since I was 18 years old, and that's about 23 years altogether, and I have never seen the media attack dogs go after an innocent bystander like I have in the past couple of days. Joe Biden, in addition to the NBC/CNN/MSNBC media outlets have all made public Joe the Plumber's personal business, pointing out that he's unlicensed (which is obvious, since he works for another plumber whose business Joe wants to buy) and that he owes $1,200 in back taxes. Whose damn business is it anyway? Joe the Plumber isn't running for office! Frankly, as a blue collar Democrat, this attack disgusts me. All Joe the Plumber did was ask The Great and Holy Obama a question about his tax plan. That's it. Now he's being dragged through the mud and he's not even a candidate!

I always thought that the Democratic party was supposed to be supportive of the 'little guy,' the blue collar worker, and now here they are, actually raking a blue collar guy across the coals. I honestly was an undecided voter until I saw Joe Biden on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, watching as they laughed at this poor guy because he has tax problems. After seeing this, I was so angry that I wanted to throw my TV out into the yard. Thankfully, I came to my senses and fired off a series of nasty emails to all the above-mentioned media outlets and the Obama campaign instead.

What I said was this:

The Obama campaign is evidently so certain that they've got this election in the bag that they've decided it's okay to step on the 'little guy,' this poor, hapless Joe the Plumber. Apparently, Obama doesn't think he needs the blue-collar vote, even though a lot of blue collar folks supported him. I had almost warmed up to Obama until I saw Joe Biden on the Tonight Show. His comments were deplorable. Seems to me that Joe the Politician (Biden) needs to apologize to Joe the Plumber.

- A Disgusted Democrat now officially Voting for McCain.

I hadn't seen the comments by Biden, but now that I've heard about them I'm outraged. I'm glad you spoke up about it.

I noticed this as well, he should have never been brought up the poor man had a huge target put on his back and the IRS is most likely thinking time to get those taxes he owes us.

I would like to point out that Obama does not think he has the race in the bag because he his pushing aggressively in many states many of which are red states. I would also like to point out that no tax plan is perfect but Obama's tax plan if implemented would help the most people who will be hurting for a long time because of the economic crisis.

Is this what your talking about? If it is it was all in fun, I mean its for laugh hell I even laughed at it and I never laugh at this stuff.



I don't logically see why your voting for McCain over a little joke like this I mean this guy had to expect this would come up how do you think people like Leno keep their jobs? Also how can you support a ticket that calls a political opponent a terrorist, to manipulate the public? The guy Obama worked with was given Chicago's Citizen of the Year award if he was still a corrupt man why did he get that award? What about the fact that McCain's campaign lied and said Ayers actions got people killed however no one died because of bombs.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ManvViFZ4l4&e[/youtube]

So really why are you saying Obama is worse than McCain when McCain uses dirty tactics just like every other elected official??

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJIQm_7YAUI&eurl=http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/[/youtube]

might as well get REALLY OUTRAGED, McCain supporters! Why stop at Joe the Plumber?

(now you know how WE felt when you fawned over W all these years.)

Merle

McCain must be really desperate to try to make the fact that Obama and Ayers served on a public committee together along with several other people into some kind of association with terrorists. Then while McCain brought "Joe the Plumber" into the public eye, mentioning him numerous times in the last debate, he tries to make Obama look bad when the media discovers that Joe the Plumber is not really what he says he is and actually has ties back to McCain.

Both candidates support the H-1B program which has caused the current economic crisis. That means both candidates are either idiots or bought off or both. You can't replace huge numbers of skilled American workers with foreign implants and expect the economy to survive.

Obama has extremely weak ties to Ayers, however, McCain has strong ties to George W. Bush. Bush is by far the worst terrorist that ever lived. Look at all the people he killed in Iraq just to save face. The number far exceeds the number that died in the World Trace Center and Iraq never had anything to do with it.

The country has been BushWhacked for 8 years now and can't tolerate another 4.

Joe the Plumber is really a symbol. He represents people who make $250,000/year and more. Obama wants to raise his taxes, saying we should "spread the wealth around." McCain wants to lower his taxes.

Over the last 8 years, wages for the middle class have been stagnant, while the rich have been getting ever richer. If you think that is a good thing, you probably should vote for McCain. If you, like me, think that the wealthy have been stealing that money from the rest of us, and it's time to lessen that growing gap, then you should vote for Obama. It's really that simple.

Based on the transcript provided, I don't see Biden's comments as attacks. He and Jay Leno were just having a "cutesy" conversation. If Biden came out and called Joe a "fraud" or something along those lines, I'd see that as an attack.



You must not watch the large media outlets very often. They attack everyone. I think Joe made things worse for himself by coming out after the initial Obama conversation and speaking with all the news people camped out at his house. I'm not saying he deserves it, but if he's out giving his political views rather than telling the media to take a hike, they're going to go after him.



Again, I believe Joe made his business public by continuing to talk to the media. Biden is repeating what the media outlets have said. Unfortunately for Joe (the Plumber) his story is proving to be false. See: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gJsP ... wD93RONUO0





I think it's everybody's business to know that the media messed up the original story. The original story was about an average guy who was trying to buy and run a small business. The media reported this as fact. They reported that this average guy was going to be taxed more by Obama's tax policy. Now we find out that the business he's referring to isn't even legal and that he's not really getting ready to buy the business - it's just some idea that "some day" he'll take it over. Again, not saying it's right, but the media is going after this guy because he lied to them and they broadcast a false story.



He lied to Obama (and the media) about his story and now he's paying for that mistake. I really don't see Obama as the cause of any of this. It's really Joe and his new buddies in the media.

Yes, I watch the media outlets all the time. I'm inundated with it. I worked for 'the media' for over twelve years.

Joe the Plumber shouldn't have been brought up by McCain, either. During the debates, I thought Joe the Plumber was a symbol for the average small business owner. I didn't find out until the next day that Joe the Plumber was an actual person.




I've seen the video. Yes, the guy talked to the media and gave his opinion and he misrepresented his background. So what? Again, he's not running for office. hang the guy anyway? You think the media has a right to dig into anyone's past at will and then splash it on TV? What was the point of the media and the Obama campaign trying to smear this guy? Obama LIED about his associations with ACORN, but that's okay. Obama LIED about Ayers, but that's okay, too. Obama LIED about Rev Wright (as if Obama went to Wright's church for 20+ years and NEVER heard a disparaging word about America... puh-leeze.) I could care less about ACORN, Wright and Ayers, as neither one of them affect me or anyone else.

The reason this bothers me so much is because I have several family members who work in the trades, some licensed, some not (but working toward it), and some of them (even myself at one time) owed back taxes. Because Joe the Plumber started out as a 'symbol' for the average small business owner (or wannabe owner) during the debate, when the media attacks a guy like Joe for simply asking a question, they're symbolically attacking the 'average Joe' out there trying to make a living in this CRAP economy where all the good jobs are going overseas or down to Mexico.



I agree that the media botched it - and it wasn't much of a story to start with. If they had fact-checked Joe the Plumber BEFORE splashing it all over network and cable TV, they might not have felt the need to attack some poor schmuck for giving an opinion.
All it's going to do is prevet the next average 'Joe' from giving their opinion to the media for fear of putting their foot into a bear trap.



Maybe so, but again, the media should have fact-checked before letting the story fly. This seat-of-the-pants style of reporting is more destructive than helpful and it's making the average American distrustful of the media. I don't think Obama is personally at fault. Joe Biden and Jay Leno laughing about this guy's predicament isn't funny - it is despicable. Joe the Plumber chewed up and spat out by the media...a barrel of laughs.

Too bad there are hundreds of thousands of American people working out there without a license because licenses are difficult and expensive to get, so they work from job to job, trying to get by and save money until they can afford to get one. These people usually owe taxes, too. They're often in a financial pit they can't easily get out of and it's not easy to watch when another person in a similar circumstance gets pilloried on TV just for asking a question and the media got nosy about it after the debate. They could have just let the guy have his say and be forgotten, but no, they had to eviscerate him publicly first.

How DARE he embellish his past for the media? You don't know his intentions. He may one day get his license and buy his boss's business. You don't know what his intentions are. You're assuming he won't, based on the media attacks. I ask why the media had to go out of their way to pursue this guy in the first place.

P.S. -

If you think Congress has a low approval rating, you might be surprised to find that the media in general has an even lower approval rating. This kind of stuff is the reason why.

The media would have gone after him whether or not he spoke to them. He spoke to Obama, and the media caught it on camera; next thing you know, it's on the television. Of course each side is going to dig into his history to try and use him to their advantage, and the media will too. That doesn't make it right. If it comes to the point where the average citizen can't even speak to someone who's running for president - someone who will respresent them and their country - without having all of their faults aired in public and their name dragged through mud, there's a distinct problem. It shows that this election is not about the issues; it's about playing the media game and emotional knee-jerk reactions that are displayed everytime politics is brought up.

It doesn't speak well for anyone.

Biden and Obama are liberal elitists, and as such they don't like regular Americans like Joe. To be more accurate, it's not so much that they don't like him... it's more a belief that he's just not as high-level a human being as they are, because he's a hard-working man: he gets dirty, he works 12-hour days... in other words, a complete loser by their standards.
So, it's less a dislike than a simple contempt for the "class" of person that Joe belongs to in their view.

I didn't fawn over W - I can't stand the man. I voted for Gore and then Kerry - see where it got me? I dislike Obama (his campaign actually, not the man himself) for the way they treated Hillary Clinton, calling her and Bill racists, etc. There's a group of Democrats out there called PUMAs [short for Party Unity My A--] and I suppose I could be counted as one of them. As a social liberal, I really don't really like McCain much, but as a fiscal conservative, I see him as the lesser of two bad choices. I might even vote for Nader, out of spite. At least Nader spent most of his adult life as a consumer advocate.

I'm so sick of this election and all the BS that's gone on with it. I'll be glad when it's over.

----In reply to the poster who mentioned that if you're for the rich getting richer, vote McCain, etc:

There's one problem with this statement - you don't raise taxes when the country's on the verge of a recession. Why? Because, like it or not, Corporations provide jobs to people like you and me. Thanks to the market crashing several times in the past weeks, corporations have lost billions if not trillions of dollars. They're closing left and right, laying people off everywhere. If you raise taxes on what few companies that are already strapped for money and managed to survive this market mess, they will either shut down or leave the country, taking our jobs with them. Social programs are great and wonderful and I support them, but NOW is not the time to push them through. As a nation, we can't afford this. You think the economy's bad now? Wait until what few jobs are out there dry up and even the large cap companies start folding. The economic conditions are such that this is a Lose/Lose situation. I repeat - Raising taxes will cause companies to leave and the market to fall, tossing us headlong into another Great Depression. There won't be anyone left to tax.

Just something to think about.

Well if Biden and Obama are elitist then that must make McCain an elitist as well he didn't even know how many homes he owns, granted it could be a senior moment though, but I don't think so.

All politicians are elitists, regardless of party affiliation. They think they know what's best for us all, which is why they've run for office.

To say they are all corrupt and evil is generalizing some are good but many are bad, that is a truth which cannot be denied.

I understand where you're coming from, but I do think there are exceptions -- or at the very least, degrees of difference.
For example, do you think Sarah Palin is an elitist? I like her precisely because she's the least politician-like person of the four currently running for the White House.

@Ragtime but doesn't Palin seem to be the most unstable of the four, if John McCain dies and he is our president I don't think she can help lead our country to prosperity.