Joe the Plumber
By 
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who briefly became “Joe the Plumber,” the metaphorical American middle-class Everyman, by injecting himself into the 2008 presidential campaign in an impromptu nationally-televised face-off with Barack Obama over taxing small businesses, died on Sunday at his home in Campbellsport, Wis., about 60 miles north of Milwaukee. He was 49.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his wife, Katie Wurzelbacher, said.
Mr. Obama, then a United States senator from Illinois, was campaigning on Shrewsbury Street in Toledo, Ohio, on Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008, when Mr. Wurzelbacher interrupted a football catch with his son in his front yard to mosey over and confront the Democratic nominee about his proposed tax increase for small businesses.
During a cordial but largely inconclusive five-minute colloquy in front of news cameras, Mr. Wurzelbacher said he was concerned about being subject to a bigger tax bite just as he was approaching the point where he could finally afford to buy a plumbing business, which he said would generate an income of $250,000 a year.
Three days later, “Joe the Plumber,” as he was popularized by Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, was invoked some two dozen times during the final debate of the presidential campaign.
But by Election Day his tenure as a burly, bald, iron-jawed John Doe eroded as the public learned that he was not a licensed plumber (he could work in Toledo only for someone with a master’s license or in outlying areas) and owed $1,200 in back taxes
This was one of our media’s finest hours, as they just lapped up this right-wing pseudo populism like a cat who just found the catnip forest. COULD NOT GET ENOUGH!!! The endless Trump safaris to Ohio and Pennsylvania have been a desperate attempt to relive those glorious days of Real Americans Telling Democrats Some Reality Which Just Happens To Be The Republican Economic Policies Millionaire Journalist Elites Love.
Not that he deserved pancreatic cancer, but he was a huge asshole. Of course, so was St. John of Arizona, not that the media dared say it.