Campaign Trail

The great outdoors

• Matthew Price
• 20 Oct 08, 06:08 PM GMT

We have just arrived in Belton, Missouri, on yet another beautiful sunny autumn day.

For the first time on this trip of ours, John McCain is going to address a crowd outdoors.

It is a bold move. His crowds have been significantly smaller than Barack Obama's - and this is just days after Mr Obama held two huge rallies in this state (an estimated 100,000 in St Louis and then just up the road in Kansas City an estimated 75,000).

Mr McCain will not get anywhere close to that.

I imagine, however, that he will be bringing messages about plumbers called Joe and socialists called Obama (he may not use the 'S' word but that is what the crowd will take away from it).

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Speaking a discredited language

• Matthew Price
• 20 Oct 08, 02:45 AM GMT

In Holland, Ohio, on a chilly autumn day, we found them burning the American flag.

Dozens of American flags in fact, being thrown onto a bonfire, and sending thick, black smoke rising into the bright blue sky.

To be fair, the men and women of the American Legion don't call it "burning" the flag - that would be disrespectful. It is called "disposing".

For the last year they've collected old, worn out flags that are too tatty to be used anymore.

As we stood and watched the smoke, and the flags disappear, one veteran told us that people at the Legion are pretty well split down the middle on who to vote for in the election.

"Oh, and you know Joe the plumber lives just down that road?"

Joe the plumber is the guy who has become the late star of this campaign - the plumber from Holland, Ohio, who challenged Barack Obama on his plan to tax people and businesses that earn more than a quarter of a million dollars a year (most economists agree that Obama's plan would also cut taxes for a majority of US citizens earning below that level).

Indeed Joe the plumber was exactly why we had come to Holland, Ohio. Is - we wondered - Joe (or more precisely the tax message) the factor that could swing the election McCain's way?

At the pumpkin stall by the dainty sign into this small village the answer was a resounding "yes". There is no way that Jim the farmer will vote Obama (not that he ever would have he said), but "spreading the wealth"? "That's the first step towards socialism." You think Obama's a socialist, I asked? "I think he wants to give someone's hard-earned money away."

Fred the customer was buying several pumpkins with his children. He didn't like Obama's message either: "I believe in capitalism. You earn it it's yours. If you don't work you don't eat."

Later, down the road at a McCain rally in Toledo, there were boos for every mention of Obama and his "spread the wealth" philosophy. John McCain senses blood on Obama's tax plan, because his political philosophy is so different and he believes that his fellow citizens are on his side.

Many are of course, like the pumpkin farmer and his customer, but I wonder how many? Back on the outskirts of Holland, we spoke to Ron the mechanic. About the same age as Joe the plumber, about the same demographic (white, working class) but this time round he's going to vote for Obama.

"Joe should have kept his mouth shut! He doesn't even have a plumber's license!" he said. And then he filled me in on the details of Obama's tax plan, as if he were himself a spokesperson (he's not, for the MSM-bashers amongst you).

He's not the only one. We met Jason the (now unemployed) metal-worker outside a McCain rally in Florida, who voted Bush in 2000, but who recited Obama's tax plan to me word for word and told me he was voting for "Barack".

Jason was wearing a Nascar cap, was tattooed up on both arms ("and they're rebel tats"), so he's not what I would expect of an Obama supporter. "I come from a pretty redneck place," he said. "I've got racist, ignorant friends who won't vote Obama because he's black. That's never bothered me."

I wonder if Joe is an important figure in this election because he has got people talking about precisely what the candidates would do with tax policy. And from what I've seen it's backfiring on McCain as many we meet like what they're hearing from Obama.

It also means that McCain is talking about lower taxes as a way of spreading wealth. Many still agree with the philosophy of course, and we meet them all the time. But it's also a discourse from another political generation, the era of Reganomics and the Republican trickle down theory.

Now is not a good time to tell people in this country that trickle down economics works. Everyone bar the very rich from whom the wealth is meant to be trickling is worried about the dollar in their pocket. For many McCain is speaking a discredited language. It may save him, but I doubt this is the issue that can turn his fortunes around, and it's the only one around for him at the moment.

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