Joe The Plumber Gets Some Friends

You sure can't have a glass jaw in this business.  If you want to run for President, it's open season, 24 hours a day, and you better be ready for it.

As I watched the Redskins game on Sunday, I got an earful about how "negative" this campaign has been.  Somehow it is worse than any election in recent memory.

I still don't buy that either campaign has moved to the dark side in Election 2008.

Has it been spirited?  Sure it has.  Have there been some who have stepped over line?  Of course.  That's the way things are.

But I think what is also true is that supporters on both sides are so heavily invested in their candidates, that they have gotten to the point where anything - and I mean anything - causes them to hyperventilate like a bunch of kids who just lost their teddy bear.

Barack Obama supposedly has been "palling around with terrorists."  This is evidently a very nasty thing to say I was told.

Realistically, the whole William Ayers story makes me shake my head, because most Americans have no earthly idea what the Weather Underground was.  It would be a stretch to say that the McCain's line of attacks on Ayers have made a difference in this campaign.

The Ayers story plays great in terms of red meat to the Republican Party faithful that can't stand the thought of an Obama win on November 4th.

But is it really changing votes in 2008 in favor of McCain?  I find that very hard to believe.

Four years ago in the 2004 election, it would have been a big deal with the echoes still fresh from the Nine Eleven attacks.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see that Ayers has made any difference.

To me it's almost more comedic than anything else.  The McCain people snarling about Obama hanging out with terrorists while the Obama people talk rabidly about how McCain seemed to be on the verge of some personal schizophrenic meltdown during the debates.

I am sure am glad we're all talking about the issues of importance to America and not those nasty personal attacks on the candidates.

Which brings me back to Joe the Plumber and his new pals.

The McCain camp seized on Joe the Plumber as something that could sway the momentum, by giving a personal angle to Obama's plans.  A sound idea most likely, but maybe too little too late.  But who knows.

(Let me add that it's a good thing Joe didn't have any outstanding warrants or anything more serious than an overdue tax bill...)

While it's nice to see that McCain now has some friends for Joe, I hope Rose the Teacher and Phil the Bricklayer and Wendy the Waitress aren't really "real" people that we're going to get to meet in coming days, because their tax bills and overdue alimony and child support will quickly become fodder for the news media.

That's the way the game is played my friends.  It ain't pretty.

Just hang on for another 15 days.