Political warfare with the Wayback Machine

On the heels of Erik’s post about McCain and the Keating 5... if McCain is going to keep with his flailing campaign’s new mud-slinging-about-things-from-back-in-the-day strategy (or stuff Sarah Palin just decides to make up, Gad love ‘er), he be better be prepared for some karmic retribution.

I would suggest going back to 2006, when McCain chose to defend his immigration policy by insisting that American workers wouldn’t pick lettuce in Yuma for $50.00 an hour. Here’s the video; and the ensuing report from the Arizona Daily Star.

Were I David Plouffe, I’d be running this video non-stop in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and Indiana. First of all, if one has even been inside a factory in the Midwest or the South in the summer, it is at least as hot as Yuma, if not hotter. And the people that work in these factories, if they are lucky enough to work at all, get paid much less than $50.00 an hour (which is a $96,000 yearly base salary). Most Americans would pick lettuce for $50.00 an hour—the problem is no one is paying close to that for that kind of work. What most Americans will not do it is pick lettuce for $4 or $5 or $6 an hour, and with the way things are now, the most economically disadvantaged amongst us would do even that, just to keep a modest amount of food on the table.

Pay a living wage and you’ll find all the hard workers you need. I suggest watching the video—it’s classic pissed-off J-Mac looking like he’s going to fly off the handle and throttle someone.