Opinion: How the GOP used ‘Joe the Plumber’ to sell a myth | CNN
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Headlines marking the passing of Samuel Wurzelbacher, also known as ‘Joe the Plumber,’ are a window into the past, when for a brief moment during the 2008 presidential campaign he became a well-known face in debates over economic policy that Nicole Hemmer argues have been feeding a right-wing myth for decades.

Headlines marking the passing of Samuel Wurzelbacher, also known as ‘Joe the Plumber,’ are a window into the past, when for a brief moment during the 2008 presidential campaign he became a well-known face in debates over economic policy that Nicole Hemmer argues have been feeding a right-wing myth for decades.

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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The headlines marking his passing — an untimely and unfortunate death from cancer at 49 — are also a window into the past, a moment to look back at Wurzelbacher’s particular role in history, when he became the face of debates over economic policy unfolding at a pivotal crossroads in America.

    With the economy in freefall, Obama had made his way to a working-class Ohio neighborhood to explain how his programs, from tax policy to health care reform, would aid working- and middle-class Americans.

    The McCain campaign saw their exchange as a golden opportunity: Here was someone who appeared to be working-class guy, Joe the Plumber, who believed that the Republican plan to cut taxes and government services was exactly what blue-collar Americans needed.

    In the late 1960s and 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s administration saw an opportunity to wrest White working-class voters from the Democratic Party, a belief bolstered after the hard-hat riot in 1970, where construction workers clashed with antiwar protesters in New York City.

    After the Supreme Court gutted the part of the Affordable Care Act that would have required states to expand Medicaid, millions of Americans found themselves facing skyrocketing health insurance rates that the even government supplements couldn’t ease.

    Class in America is material but it is also a claim to a set of values and a way of life, as well as an argument about who is an authentic member of “real America.” It is an identity deeply inflected by race and gender, and sometimes has little to do with dollar amounts.

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