Analysis: Say it ain't so, Joe
Thursday, 16 Oct 2008 04:24
Joe the plumber cannot save John McCain
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A week after predicting that John McCain was running out of time and ideas in his bid for the White House, the Republican nominee has delivered his best performance on the debating season.
Too bad, for him, that with less than three weeks until the US goes to the polls; his opponent was again up to the challenge of matching him.
Barack Obama was as cool as a tall glass of ice water in tonight's debate in New York, confidently batting aside allegations of being too wordy – McCain deciding to declare war on words for lack of a better enemy – and associated with a 1960s radical.
The Democratic nominee went into too much detail in rebutting some of McCain's attacks, costing him chances of an outright victory, but a record of two draws and one win in the debates will help him over the line on November 4th.
What had become apparent in the two debates that preceded tonight's session in Long Island was a growing sense of voter apathy towards them.
McCain especially had suffered from conservatives who questioned why he appeared to be holding back, while both candidates had been accused of ignoring the debate and moderator's questions to deliver pre-written statements.
Tonight was a mix of both the fresh and the thought-out, illustrated perfectly by McCain's early quip about Joe the plumber, an apparently real voter unimpressed by Obama's tax plans.
So encapsulating was Joe the plumber to the debate that his name and profession was brought up in answer to almost every one of moderator Bob Schieffer's questions.
His presence contributed to the best exchange of the night, when McCain attacked Obama on a 'fine' for employers who fail to deliver on healthcare insurance for workers.
"If my old buddy - Joe the plumber - is out there, if you're out there my friend, if you've got employees and kids, if you don't adopt the healthcare plan that Senator Obama mandates you are going to have to pay a fine - and I want to know what that fine is," McCain admitted.
Obama's reply was almost instantaneous: "Here's your fine Joe - zero."
Off camera came McCain's own incredulous and unplanned response: "Zero?!"
So while tonight's debate could not justifiably be given the boring tag of its predecessors its overall importance in the race for the White House is overstated.
The closing figure of the Dow Jones tomorrow will be a more likely barometer to who will replace George Bush, and at the moment it is still pointing fixedly on Obama.
Matthew Champion