The October Surprise is a Plumber

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Matt Osborne
We have met the October Surprise, and his name is Joe. Or maybe Samuel. Details are still being sketched out.

If you missed the debate last night, John McCain replaced ‘Joe Six-Pack’ with Joe the Plumber, referring to this Joe Plumber more than a dozen times. He even opened the debate by talking about poor Joe, average plumber, and how unfair Obama’s tax plan would be to this hardworking American.

Just one problem: his name isn’t really Joe, he isn’t really a plumber, he’s connected to McCain in all the wrong ways, and he’s hardly an ‘independent’ voter. The more light gets shined on this average Joe, the less average he looks — in fact, Joe has ‘SETUP‘ written all over him. The scheme also has ‘incompetent‘ written in big, red letters; “Joe the Plumber” is a facade — one that has cracked in less than 24 hours. Welcome to the Age of Google.

Exhibit 1: The tape where Joe met Obama in the handshake line at an Ohio rally.

There’s something wrong with this scene; “Joe” seems to have his talking points well-prepared, and he’s projecting his voice like a professional. His diction is clearer than the average Joe.

Furthermore, there are some interesting coincidences: Joe’s plumbing business just happens to make exactly $250,000 a year, which just happens to be the cutoff for Obama’s middle class tax cut. An ABC crew just happened to be on hand to record the meeting (ABC just happening to be the network with the most conservative bias in its news department). Then, 24 hours later, John McCain just happens to know all about Joe the Plumber, calling him “my good friend.”

Exhibit 2: John McCain actually DOES have ties to Joe the Plumber. And by the way, Joe isn’t his real name.

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher just happens to be related to Robert Wurzlebacher Jr., a partner in the Keating Five scandal that, as it happens, almost ruined John McCain as a freshman senator. That Wurzelbacher was sentenced to forty months in prison for the Lincoln Savings and Loan debacle and has consistently contributed to right-wing political causes. One blog commenter even reports that Ancestry.com shows a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher lived at 1960 W. Keating Drive in Mesa, Arizona within the last 20 years. Google Maps shows the address has a parking lot and stands at the entrance of a subdivision. Whether said development is part of the Keating real estate empire remains to be seen, but provides a tantalizing link to McCain’s home state.

Exhibit 2: Joe the Plumber isn’t even a plumber. And his story doesn’t add up.

His license expired in 2002. Furthermore, Ohio is a closed-shop state, meaning he would have to belong to a pipefitter’s union. But the local union rep says there is no member named Wurzelbacher — Samuel or Joe — in their shop.

As for his tale of woe, the numbers don’t make sense. If the plumbing business Joe says he wants to buy is truly making more than $250,000 profit, then the actual cost of that franchise should be over a million dollars (!). As Steve Young points out at HuffPo, anyone with that kind of scratch is NOT middle class, making small business taxes utterly irrelevant. Even after a 3% tax increase, leaving out any and all breaks the business might get under the remainder of Obama’s plan, it’s more than enough to live on.

And speaking of taxes, Joe has trouble remembering to pay them.

Exhibit 3: The coincidences add up as the story seeks critical mass, and Joe’s true colors start to fly.

It turns out “Joe” is a registered Republican. Within hours of McCain’s mention of Joe the Plumber, a camera from a right-wing think tank just happens to be in his house to make a video:


In that video, “Joe” makes some pretense of neutrality, but his real feelings are quite clear. The next day, “Joe” happens to have a day off from his hard, hard job (“working 12 hours a day, seven days a week” as McCain declared last night) to make himself available for morning show interviews — and one extremely revealing stand with a local news crew. In this, he goes so far as to call Obama a “socialist,” declaring that the Democratic candidate should leave the country:


In his rally today, John McCain declares Joe the Plumber the “real winner” of last night’s debate, invoking his (fake) name 19 times, by one count. ABC reports that “Joe” has replaced Bill Ayers in the McCain script. In seeking to dump the losing Ayers issue and ‘”turn the page on the economy,” McCain has a new symbol of middle America threatened by Obama’s class warfare. What a lucky happenstance this Joe Plumber is!

And then there’s this commercial, running in Pennsylvania the day after the debate, invoking the Republican boilerplate on class warfare, and which just happens to use the ABC footage:


Democrats have been waiting with bated breath for the October Surprise. Some nervous Nellies of the lefty blogosphere have engaged in dire pessimism. Well, the surprise is here…and he’s a transparent sham emerging from the right-wing echo chamber.



About Matt Osborne

Veteran blogging the culture wars from Alabama. Video journalist, mash-up artist, aspiring novelist, and metalhead. Expect bunnies, geekery, dark humor, and snarky empirical analysis to annoy idealists of all stripes. You can follow me on Twitter, but be ready 'cause it might get loud.
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  • Bitbrain

    OK, from the body language stand point, I couldn’t tell anything concrete. The sun was in his face (making him squint and the video quality is poor, so I couldn’t see any micro-expressions. It was obviously a hot day, so the face touching is meaningless. The only indicator I could see was that most of the time “Joes” hands were on his hips, which is typical of readiness and agressiveness. Both are to be expected when challenging anyone, let alone someone in a crowd of people that support the person you are challenging.

    Also, it’s not a lie that his name is Joe(seph)… Some people do go by their middle names.

    To me, the more interesting aspect is when the camera pans and centers on the guy in the crowd. The camera man panned away from the “object” of discussion. So, the camerman was either bored with the conversation, or it was not suiting his purpose for filming it. The cameraman centers on a single person in the crowd who mouthes something to the camerman. Although I don’t really know what he is saying, my impression was “A-hole” or “Let’s Go”.

    If this is truly a Right-Wing setup:
    A. It would be consistent with conservative depravity.
    B. I doubt John McCain knew, because it is extremely short-term manipulation that will ultimately impact him negatively.