Tito Munoz

I really love America, because it produces people like Tito Munoz.  You don't know who Tito is?  Well, let me introduce you to a great man.   Tito showed up at a McCain/Palin Rally in Woodbridge, Virginia this weekend, and let the media have it over their treatment of Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher. 

{...}In the audience Saturday, there were plenty of people who were mad about it. There was real anger at this rally, but it wasn’t, as some erroneous press reports from other McCain rallies have suggested, aimed at Obama. It was aimed at the press. And that’s where Tito Munoz came in.

After McCain left, as the crowd filed out, Munoz made his way to an area near some loudspeakers. He attracted a few reporters when he started talking loudly, in heavily-accented English, about media mistreatment of Wurzelbacher. (It was clear that Spanish was Munoz’s native language, and he later told me he was born in Colombia.) When I first made my way over to him, Munoz thought I was there to give him the third degree.

“Are you going to check my license, too?” he asked me. “Are you going to check my immigration status? I’m ready, I have everything here. Whatever you want, I have it. I have my green card, I have my passport — “

was a little surprised. Did Munoz really bring his papers with him to a McCain rally? I asked.

“Yeah, I have my papers right here,” he said. “I’m an American citizen. Right here, right here.” With that, he produced a U.S. passport, turned it to the page with his picture on it, and thrust it about an inch from my nose. “Right here,” he said. “In your face

Munoz said he owned a small construction business. “I have a license, if you guys want to check,” he said.

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”{...}

God bless you, Tito.  We need more immigrants like you. 

Over the weekend, the husband and I were at a party, and we were chatting with a friend of ours, one more conservative in our party of liberal friends (Which makes a total of three conservatives.  Usually politics are verboten at these get togethers.) and, when we were off to the side, away from everyone else and he knew he was safe,  he said he couldn't believe how they'd gone after Joe the Plumber, and how vicious they'd been about it.  The husband and I agreed with him when he insisted this was really going to come back to haunt the Democrats on election day.  It's entirely possible that it will---and it's more than possible, it's probable. 

The media may have been doing Obama's dirty work with Joe the Plumber, but it's not the media who will pay.  Good on Tito for calling them on it, but it's not the media who will pay...it's Obama.  People are sick of this stuff. In an ironic plot twist, the mainstream media, which has been nothing if not for Barack Obama since day friggin' one, might have cost their Messiah the election.  Their ill-informed savaging of Joe the Plumber's reputation is not going down well with people.  Decent people.  People who might have been tempted to vote for Obama, but whose eyes have since been opened about the Obama Nation's behavior.  How many voters does this guy think he can alienate and still win the election?   The PUMA's {"Party Unity, My Ass"}are voting for McCain, because they're pissed off about how Obama and the DNC treated Hillary Clinton and her supporters.  There are any number of people who are voting for McCain because they're sick of how Obama treats people who disagree with him, by labeling them racists. And so on and so forth...and you know what?  The alienated voters have a tendency to add up in the positive column for McCain.  I keep hearing how they're not going to stay home on election day---they're going to go out and vote for McCain because they will not tolerate an Obama Presidency. That's how much Obama has pissed these people off: He's driven them entirely out of voting Democratic to vote for McCain, someone whom they probably never would have considered voting for in the first place.  A vote for McCain is turning into a protest vote against Obama, and you know what...unlike votes cast for Ralph Nader, these might actually help get someone elected.   

Let's be frank, the reason Obama thinks he can alienate these people is because he thinks he's got the election in the bag.  Which, if my understanding of how polls can change within a twenty-four hour news cycle is correct, is not true, with two weeks left to go.  Particularly when the major polls are oversampling Democrats to get Obama his beloived three point lead?  It's not in the bag--AT ALL.  It's closer than it ever has been. 

An Army of Joes can change a lot. 

I meant it last week when I wrote that Joe Wurzelbacher could probably cost Obama the election.  We've all been waiting for the "October Surprise"?  Well, my personal feeling is that a big, bald plumber from Toledo is the October Surprise.  He asked a question, it was answered poorly, and he was savaged for it.  No one deserves to be treated like that.  Joe resonates with people.  They consider themselves to be normal, average Joes.  They may not be plumbers, but they, too, have dreams, perhaps of owning their own business, working for themselves and making it into an entirely new tax bracket.  Tito is one of those guys.  This isn't about lower taxes just this instant---although, that would be nice---it's more about knowing that there won't be higher taxes when they get into that new tax bracket.  It's about leaving room to dream about the future, and how you want that future world to work.  That's no small thing.  Only one candidate comes close to providing that sort of freedom, the freedom to dream and hope and to work hard for your own future.

And it ain't Barack Obama.