The Beaver Picture

So is one of the tenets of socialism redistribution of the wealth? Not just socialism — a lot of other liberal and left wing philosophies — redistribution of the wealth? I don't believe in it. I believe in wealth creation by Joe the Plumber.

-The McCain

This Joe the Plumber dude is beginning to poach on the territory of another dude who spent some time in the Trades, and I can't imagine the Locals are gonna like it.

I guess you could point out that plumbers aren't exactly the engine that drives an economy, and that even if the Romans did prove that good plumbing is the central necessity of a durable empire, the butt-cracked wrench-wielders themselves are in a derivative profession, performing services-for-fees: important labor, for sure, but not exactly the central productive activity of a national economic system.

But the thing is. Here you have John McCain, an agèd bundle of entitled resentment, long past his age of political vitality, revealed as inadequate for prime time, going on like some also-ran wannabe county councilman, the sort who confines himself by necessity to angry letters to the editor, while Barack Obama promises to take his forty gajillion dollars and buy the Universe and turn gravity into sunshine and dark matter into Skittles with the transformational hope of his change-powered Diktatorship of the Proletariat. Everyone is all like, "John McCain is running a negative campaign." True, but nothing to get to worked up about. He's not running it very well.