My dad, who died in 1967, was a member of the CIO, the United Steelworkers of America, then when the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged with the American Federation of Labor, the Plumbers Local #55 in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was an elected official of that union. The final year of his life, his influence helped me get a summer job as union plumber’s laborer, earning the astronomical sum of $4.67 an hour. And that was just “straight time.” Gracias a JFK’s New Frontier, and LBJ’s Great Society, the official federal minimum wage had just arrived at one US dollar per hour. Did my dad have friends in the Teamsters, yep. Was he a big fan of labor-mob investment ventures like the Central States Pension fund. Not really, and he paid the price for it. Before I get way off message, I come from a plumber family, and in the tone of Lloyd Bentsen, I gotta tell you, “Joe, you ain’t no plumber.” Joe, you have the values of a scab. Basta, as my dad’s goombah the late “Babe” Triscaro would say.

If the “liberal media” is giving the McCain campaign and its consultants a mercy fuck, this be it. Ditto letting a lot of other racist clutter go across the MSM and blogosphere. Trouble is that letting this racist frickin’ Joe the Plumber avatar grow, and gain momentum, can cause more than just collateral damage to Obama’s chances. There are at rough estimate around 15% percent still up for grabs who can put McCain in a “Dewey beats Truman” scenario. It’s no secret that union and most non-union plumbers tend to be white, middle class and racist like a lot of other blue collar whites. They may tell Richie Daley, or the NY Gottbaums or friends of the former Miss Dallesandro yes we will… but hold a beat… Take the identified undecideds, then the 5% “margin of error. And then include my “double secret five percent” of whites who tell pollsters that they will vote Obama and are lying through their teeth, those who buy in to the GOP avatar they have the hubris to blame Obama for creating, and you’ve got a game changer. Drawing out this component of the electorate mirrors Dick Nixon’s “Hardhats” and “Forgotten American” campaigns, that put the Dickster over the top and ultimately got Diane Sawyer started in her first big job, running the cottage cheese and ketchup up to the second floor of the White House. One would hope a Colin Powell endorsement of Obama knock Joe the Plumber back where he belongs, huffing gas from his Bernz-o-Matic soldering tank:)