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"Joe The Plumber" Resonates Online

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

John McCain wooed voters in Florida Thursday, where he used the symbol of small businessman "Joe the Plumber" to sell his tax plan -- even though the man in question doesn't have a plumbing license, and would have been given a tax cut under Barack Obama's plan.

Nevertheless, many voters both in Floridaand elsewhere seem to have really embraced the "Joe the Plumber" message. One manifestation of that can be seen in this gallery of videos submitted to the McCain campaign this week. The campaign took what it thought were the best videos and created a television ad out of them.

You can see the crowd-sourced, feel-good attack ad below. For more analysis of the two candidates' plans, take a look at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center's examination here.

Here's a summary of what it found:

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next ten years, according to a newly updated analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Compared to current law, TPC estimates the Obama plan would cut taxes by $2.9 trillion from 2009-2018. McCain would reduce taxes by nearly $4.2 trillion. Obama would give larger tax cuts to low- and moderate-income households and pay some of the cost by raising taxes on high-income taxpayers. In contrast, McCain would cut taxes across the board and give the biggest cuts to the highest-income households.

Full post as published by Threat Level on October 23, 2008 (boomark / email).