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I’ve seen a lot of people who think that Joe the Plumber won the debate for McCain last night.

If so, then the campaign is in even worse trouble than I thought. See, if it took a Joe the Plumber to get the McCain campaign a win, when his exchange with Senaotr Obama was nothing new, you have to consider the McCain campaign dry toast. Done and over with.

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk would like you to believe that Joe the Plumber represents traditional blue collar Americans everywhere. He does not. My plumber doesn’t make enough that he could buy out his boss and small business owners are not traditional Democrats–employees are.

Let’s look at what Senator Obama actually said. He told Joe that he wanted to see the people that helped get him there (to the $250,000 income mark) benefit as well, to see the wealth spread around. The McCain campaign and conservatives everywhere gasped and said,” ooh, he’s a socialist”.

What they missed is that Obama never once suggested that Joe’s “wealth” be given to random people on the street. He suggested, shock! faint! that the people who did the work that made the money ought to be entitled to a share of it too. Arguably, the senator needs a better political flak. His is doing a remarkably poor job controlling the spin on anything.

Here’s how the Joe the Plumber remark should be interpretted. Executives from Enron to Tyco to Lehman Brothers have spent decades trying to make millions while the little guy, the factory worker or the low-level sales manager, does all the work. It’s great that Joe has a boss who has paid him what he is worth and made it so that he can move up to an ownership position, but that should not mean that Joe can rest on his laurels and make other people do the work.

The reality is that owning a small business, any business, creates stresses on the owner, but if all the owner does is take and take from his employees than sometimes there has to be an equalizing force. Generally, we call this government. We all know that no matter how poorly an employer treats his staff, in desperate economic times, someone will tolerate the injustice just to work. Barack is fighting that injustice.

Now, I don’t know. Maybe Joe the plumber will be a great boss, but the reality is that most business owners do not play fair with their employees and Barack knows that.

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