Joe the Plumber: The Morning After

In the wake of last night's third and final Presidential debate, for all the trouble the mainstream press is going to in denying it, McCain was the clear winner. People who are willing to believe anything Obama says were not swayed, even when he lied through his teeth about his associations with ACORN, William Ayers, and the issue of partial-birth abortion. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air briefly examines the major stretches of the truth for what they are. McCain has gained a couple of points in the polls, but Ann Coulter reads between the lines of those numbers, in telling us what history has taught us already about polling results: "In addition to the social pressure to constantly prove you're not a racist, apparently there is massive social pressure to prove you're not a Republican. No one is lying about voting for McCain just to sound cool... Reviewing the polls printed in The New York Times and The Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points."

All that aside, people can see for themselves how things went. The first of the two highlight clips deals with Taxes, Ayers and ACORN. The second covers Health Care and Roe v Wade. McCain listened to his supporters, not to mention to his running mate, came out swinging, and didn't let up. Obama maintained his usual poise most of the time, except when he wasn't a bit flustered, and stuttering in a vain attempt to play loose with the facts. If the American people are stupid enough to vote for their Messiah, they deserve whatever socialist agenda he hands out. Nobody thinks it can happen here. They also said that in Vienna before the Germans came to town. (I know. I worked for a guy who grew up there in the 1930s.)

But the real object of attention for this news cycle is, of course, Joe Wurzelbacher, the 36-year-old plumber from Holland, Ohio, a burg of less than two thousand people on the western outskirts of Toledo. "Joe the Plumber" has had to contend with the news vans parked outside his house since yesterday. They should be gone by the weekend, then maybe he can actually get some work done. We've also gotten some interesting comments from yesterday post entitled "Joe Plumber's Economics."

In the meantime, and while he has his self-admitted fifteen minutes of fame, Joe has had some things to say. He's obviously not used to this kind of attention, and harbors no illusions about himself. But while he is not saying how he will cast his ballot, it is all too obvious what he thinks of at least one of the candidates. We learn more on ABC's Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer (previous paragraph), and from an interview with Fox News Radio's John Gibson (this paragraph). This guy is by no means a mouthpiece for a political party; he's just a guy who, in the immortal words of Huey Lewis, is "taking what they're giving 'cuz I'm working for a living."

The upshot? John McCain is still in this ball game, but it's now the bottom of the ninth, and he's trailing on the board, thanks to a combination of arrogant bias from the mainstream press, and a lack of imagination from inside the Straight Talk Express. With the bases now loaded from last night, all he needs to do now, is just hit one right out of the park.



[THIS JUST IN: Confederate Yankee, one of the best political blogs out there, weighs in with a post-mortem of his own. Meanwhile, Hot Air's Contrarian-in-Residence, Allahpundit, checks for the obligatory dirty laundry.]
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