Joe the Plumber 2, Joe the Lawyer 0

Oct 16th, 2008 by admin

Pity poor “Joe the Lawyer.”

While both presidential candidates professed support for the Ohio man mulling buying a plumbing business, they both disowned trial lawyers to some degree.

In the case of John McCain, the subject came up in reference to a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that a woman who discovered on the verge of retirement retired that her employer had paid her less than male counterparts was time-barred from suing for pay discrimination. McCain thinks the case was rightly decided; Barack Obama has supported congressional attempts to amend federal discrimination law to allow claims such as the woman’s. In referring to the bill during the debate, McCain dismissively called it a “trial lawyer’s dream.”

Meanwhile, Obama, citing examples of times at which he had broken with fellow Democrats in his voting, pointed to a bill he had backed limiting some lawsuits when he first arrived in Congress. The measure “wasn’t very popular with trial lawyers,” he said.

But I bet Joe the Plumber loved it.