Did any goodwill carry over from that Al Smith dinner?

No.

Or rather, it was politics as usual the next morning. And by necessity, both campaigns are warring over their versions of fixing the economy. Media coverage is fixed on the candidates’ answers in Wednesday night’s debate about what they plan to do on spending and budget cutting.

McCain is staying on his message that Obama’s plan means confiscatory taxes.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it.

“At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said in a radio address. “They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”

But Obama is sticking with his message.

Obama has said his tax policies would cut payments for 95 percent of working Americans, while increasing them only for families making more than $250,000 a year. McCain has argued that 40 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes, either because they are seniors or don’t meet minimum earnings thresholds, so the only way to cut their taxes is to give them various credits.

“In other words, Barack Obama’s tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington,” McCain said in the radio address.

This message is resonating with mainstream Americans, who are practically foreign to mainstream media. The reason Joe the Plumber has become an instant overnight star (he shuns the very idea, and hopes his celebrity flames out fast) is because he is Everyman in Middle America and (as some of these media do recognize) emblematic of the economic angst at this key moment in politics.

At a McCain rally this morning in North Carolina, there were many signs reflecting that the collective common man has a new face. “I’M Joe the plumber” read one sign. “Obama WILL take Joe’s taxes”, read another. In the middle of his rousing talk to this crowd, McCain brought up the debate…..both the televised and the ongoing one, and he said this:

The real winner was Joe the plumber because he’s the only one who got a real answer out of Obama.

Okay, political jabs are going around on both sides. Plenty of them.

Obama and Biden are making the most they can of Joe’s presence in the campaign, themselves. Obama told a crowd, and Biden told the press, (casting at least some aspersions on the guy) that they don’t know of any plumber making $250,000. It may get the crowd going, but it doesn’t get to what Joe told Obama in the first place, in that now fateful encounter in his neighborhood on Obama’s swing through Ohio.

Joe said he hopes to eventually buy the small plumbing business where he works, told the candidate roughly what that business was worth, and asked if he would take more taxes from him. Obama may not have listened well, but the people did. They heard the question, and the answer that he wanted to spread the wealth. That’s the central topic of the weekend, at least so far…