It's kind of ironic that the Republicans are suddenly banking on Joe the Plumber to get them into the White House. It wasn't that long ago, the early 1970s to be exact, when former President Richard Nixon blessed a small group of so-called "plumbers" to plug the leaks of classified White House information to the media. Nixon's plumbers got a little carried away with their mandate and ultimately broke into the Watergate complex, with the bungled burglary and ensuing scandal forcing Nixon to resign as President.

Republicans gave plumbers a bad name then and they still don't help them now. With the average American plumber making less than $50,000 a year, it's clear that plumbers will fare far better under Barack Obama's economic policies. John McCain's sad attempt to portray himself as the champion of plumbers everywhere is an insult to the bright, hard-working people in this profession -- and to hard-working middle-class Americans everywhere.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman elaborates on the injustice of Republican economic policies in an editorial for the New York Times.