Joe the Plumber fucked a goat!
Or not. Look, I have no interest in Joe the Plumber personally and I have less than zero desire for information about his private life. I agree with Scott and My Baby Blue here. His marital status and divorce records really have no bearing on anything, for example, and whoever reported that stuff is kind of a dick.
But that said, there is I think a legitimate question about how accurate he is on the specific grounds upon which he decided to challenge Obama face-to-face. He depicted himself as an Everyman who would be hurt by Obama's tax proposals. He made a specific claim about his economic status and ambitions, relative to what a candidate for president was saying. To that extent he made his own personal economic position fair game -- he brought it up, and clearly intended to put Obama on the spot in that confrontation through this kind of personalization. "Here is me, you don't get me."
There is, after all, a legitimate political and policy issue here. Will Obama's tax proposals, if enacted, do harm to actual or potential small business owners?
The fact that "Joe" was full of shit about this particular point is therefore relevant. And here are the relevant data:
In 2009 about 35 million tax returns will report some income from small businesses, according to Roberton Williams, principal research associate at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Of these only about 660,000 tax units — or 1.9 percent — would see an increase under Senator Obama’s tax proposal.
I don't really think you need to go much past that, frankly. This is a person who wants to go on wingnut media as the champion of an entire class of people who will be disadvantaged by a policy proposal, but the inescaple point is that even taking him at his word he would represent 1.6% of a relatively small slice of the entire middle class of Americans. That he wants to babble about "socialism" when the real issue is merely jiggering with the tax code is gravy. Carazy gravy, but gravy.
The distinction here between "Joe" and the Frost family, by the way, is that "Joe" made representations about his hypothetical economic position, while the Frosts cited their actual position. In doubting Joe, you are doubting a hypothetical. In doubting the Frosts, you were accusing them of fraud. Not the same thing.