Gail Collins on the McCain campaign’s Hail Joe play

With less than three weeks to go, saddled with an unpopular ideology and an unattractive candidate, the McCain campaign’s deep thinkers decided the only possible hope was …Joe the Plumber! Joe is, of course, the conservative guy from northwestern Ohio who told Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more” because he planned to buy a business that he hoped would reel in more than $250,000 a year in profits.

The proper answer, as Obama should have known, was: “No, it won’t.”

…

Joe the Plumber, it turns out, is actually named Samuel and is not a licensed plumber. He has a lien on his house for unpaid taxes. While his professional life is still a little hazy, there is not much evidence he’s ever going to become a small business owner. And he would be a beneficiary of the Barack Obama tax plan.

So Joe’s business is him and some other guy who actually has training and a license. They make $120k/yr, of which Joe makes $40k. Despite this less-than-stellar evidence of motivation, Joe wants to buy the business, which essentially means the business would be him and no other guy. The only way Joe can work legally is with the other guy (assuming that’s actually true, and the locals seem to feel it’s not), so the value of the business without the other guy is, for all intents and purposes, nothing.

But in case his worthless business should ever illegally make over a quarter of a million dollars, Obama is going to tax him an extra $900, which would eat away at all the tax breaks he’d gotten up to that point. Those of them which weren’t eaten up by unpaid taxes.

That about it?

Bonus McCain campaign-on-Joe action, now with extra Joe:

In Miami, Lieberman told a rally that McCain would “fight for José el plomero!” 

That’s Algohombre, to you, or as he’s known to his compinches back in Darien, José el Senador.