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When Obama said here is your fine: zero – I said Obama’s rude. And McCain was shocked! He should at least know what his opponent is offering.
The real question is can Joe the Plumber save the McCain campaign – I guess we have moved on from Ayers and the palling around phase – now it’s Joe the Plumber – who by the way does not earn more that $250,000 – so he would receive an Obama tax cut if Obama were elected. In an interview Joe Plumber said – well McCain’s got a good war record – and he’s not sure what Obama will do – and this exactly where McCain wants everyone – buy into my war record and glorious past – over my plan for the American people. A long line of McCains means little – but a tax cut for the middle class – and some help with the expenses in life does.
McCain mentioned “Joe the Plumber” almost constantly throughout the final debate — even tying him into an attack on Obama’s health care plan. But the move led to a “deer in the headlights” moment for the Republican.
“Joe, Senator Obama’s plan … If you are out there, my friend, and you have got employees and you have got kids, if you don’t get a health care plan that Sen. Obama mandates, he is going to fine you,” McCain said.
“I’m happy to talk to you, Joe, too, if you’re out there,” Obama responded. “Here is your fine: Zero.”
McCain interrupted, asking “Zero?” He stayed frozen in the same position, blinking his eyes in confusion, as Obama continued his answer.
“Zero,” Obama said. “You won’t pay a fine because as I said in our last debate, and I’ll repeat John, I exempt small businesses from the requirement for large businesses that can afford to provide health care to their employees who are not doing it. I exempt small businesses from having to pay into a kitty.”
Obama then ripped McCain for proposing to tax the health care benefits individuals will receive from their employer — a winner for him in past debates.
The Washington Post Fact Checker confirmed Obama’s response:
- McCain was wrong to state that small businessman “Joe the Plumber” would end up paying a fine if he refused to provide his workers with health insurance. Under the Obama plan, small businesses are specifically exempted from a requirement imposed on large companies that they contribute to a national health fund if they fail to make “a meaningful contribution” to their employees’ health care costs.
Source: HP
With the presidential campaign approaching its final stretch, Barack Obama finds himself in an enviable position.
One official close to the campaign said that September’s fundraising haul set a new record, surpassing the $66 million Obama raised in August. Another aide, asked about the campaign’s take, would only describe it: “big.”
Moreover, the assault that John McCain has launched against Obama’s character – including repeated criticisms of the Illinois Democrat’s association to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers – has largely backfired. Obama sources shared internal campaign polling figures that show a sharp fall in positive feelings for the Republican ticket. Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain’s unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent, notably higher than anything detected in recent public polling.
Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain’s unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent
Gov. Sarah Palin is faring just as poorly if not worse. In New Hampshire, an official with knowledge of internal polling says the Alaska Republican’s favorable rating has nosedived to 36 percent, with 56 percent viewing her unfavorably.
Even within Republican circles it seems there is a growing sentiment that McCain’s recent strategy has had a blow-back effect. On Sunday, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol called the negative tactics “stupid.”
“The main thing to say about these negative ads — which, I don’t think, almost none of them has been across the line — they haven’t worked,” he said on Fox News Sunday. “Obama’s favorable rating is as high as it’s been in three months. It’s actually gone up in the last month. So it’s a stupid campaign.”
Conservative writers George Will and Paul Gigot, as well as more than a handful of Republican officials, expressed equal amounts of doubt or disparagement with how the Arizona Republican has handled his campaign in recent days.
Obama aides will attack Republicans over efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.
And yet, the McCain campaign seems content to double down on its recent course of action. On Sunday night it was announced that the Republican National Committee would make a new push – in the form of a web video – to raise the Ayer’s issue.
At this point, Obama might welcome the move. His campaign’s data suggests that the remaining undecideds are those voters who tend to be non-political — a group that does not respond well to negative advertisements. As such, much of what Chicago headquarters plans to do going forward will echo the economic message it has pushed in recent weeks.
There will, however, be one new ripple. On Monday, Obama’s communication’s shop is expected to go on the offense on issues of voter protection after a week in which Republicans cried foul about registration efforts in various states and painted the community organizing group ACORN as a criminal enterprise.
Obama aides will attack Republicans over efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.
Source: HP
Control your dog?
John Aravosis at AmericaBlog writes:
McCain was speaking today in New Mexico, doing his usual personal attack on Barack Obama, as the stock market plummeted (you can see the ticker next to McCain on the screen, an apt reminder of what McCain and his fellow Republicans represent), and McCain asked the crowd “who is Barack Obama?” Immediately you hear someone yell “terrorist.” McCain pauses, the audience laughs, and McCain continues on, not acknowledging, not chastising, not correcting. Oh, but McCain does say in the next sentence that he’s upset about all the “angry barrage of insults.”
Marc Ambinder notes that the shouter advances McCain’s Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright attacks, while Jonathan Martin suggested the campaign would need a third party to do it:
Judging by McCain’s slightly startled reaction, he clearly didn’t anticipate that reaction, and McCain’s in no way responsible for the utterances of anybody in his audience. But he must have some idea of how deeply this fear/outsider/other meme has spread. A tripartite strategy isn’t needed.
UPDATE: The Washington Post reports on a similar moment at a Palin rally today:
“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.
“Boooo!” said the crowd.
“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'” she continued.
“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.
And Dana Milbank highlights another incident from Tuesday:
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
Source: HP
Obama Will Make Debate A Townhall If McCain Doesn't Show
“I actually think he’s going to come to the debate,” the adviser, Robert Gibbs, told reporters in Washington on Thursday.
And echoing a talking point that Senator Obama used in his press conference on Thursday, Mr. Gibbs added: “I think he will decide that a president is capable of doing more than one thing at a time.”
Barack Obama is committed to hosting a public, televised event Friday night in Mississippi even if John McCain does not show up, an official close to the Obama campaign tells the Huffington Post.
In McCain’s absence, the Senator is willing to make the scheduled debate a townhall meeting, a one-on-one interview with NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer, or the combination of the two, the official said.
Such a course of action could make life incredibly difficult for McCain, who has called for the suspension of the debate in light of the current economic crisis. Should he stay in Washington D.C. — if a bailout is not completed by then — and let Obama alone reach tens of millions of television viewers?
A lot, of course, depends upon what the debate commission decides to do. At this point in time, there is no indication that they are going to postpone the affair, as the McCain campaign has asked.
Separately, on Thursday, Obama himself said he was intending to go to Oxford, Miss for the scheduled debate and called on McCain to be there with him.
“The American people deserve to hear directly from myself and Sen. McCain about how we intend to lead our country,” Obama said. “The times are too serious to put our campaign on hold, or to ignore the full range of issues that the next president will face.”
Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said on Thursday that he expected the debate to go forward as planned.
Source: HP
As McCain tries to keep up the appearance of the in control commander and chief ~ over the mess that his 26 years in Washington allowed him to be in a position to create ~ he abandons the campaign trail and rushes back to Washington to advise on the Fixin’ of the economy. Perhaps this is a little too Maverick ~ for what both America and the world needs at this time.
Out Foxing Karl Rove 
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