Joe the Plumber isn't in the range of the $250,000 income bracket that would see taxes slightly rise under Barack Obama's plan. But he's desperately afraid that he might someday be so successful, and then be subject to a raise in taxes. (In the meantime, his taxes will go down, but never mind).
The argument that Obama has made before, and should have pressed in the debate last night, is that a broke middle class doesn't create demand for plumbing.
I don't know what projects Joe's company works for. But I know that families unable to pay winter heating bills, medical costs, and college tuition aren't likely to, say, add new bathrooms to their houses.
They aren't likely to buy new houses, so the demand for new housing with attendant plumbing will drop.
Without money, they can't buy products and services, hurting business that might otherwise open - businesses that need plumbing.
Without a strong middle class, the economy collapses.
After eight years of agressively funnelling every dime they could to the top 2%, the problem isn't a lack of capital to create jobs. It's a lack of funds among the population to purchase the products and services these jobs would produce.
Obama needs to explicitly draw out the reality of his argument that we need bottom-up, not trickle-down, economics in a way everyone can understand. He has before, but I was disappointed not to see it more clearly in the debate last night. Here's hoping he does so on the trail.