The 2008 race for President of the United States has been a Joefest. Joe is a common name in America, and has long been associated with good, hardworking people. In this election though, Joe is everywhere and everything. You can’t keep track of the Joes without a scorecard, so here is a guide to election year Joes.

The Average Joe: The Average Joe is an ordinary guy. He is often mistaken for Joe Six Pack, but he could be anybody.

Joe Six-Pack: Joe Six-Pack is a red state staple. He is their symbol of a regular guy (The Average Joe). He is the kind of guy who might work a construction job all day, then hit the convenience store for a six-pack of beer (Bud if he’s doing well, Pabst if times are tough) and down every beer while watching Nashville Star or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. His wife is a soccer (or hockey) mom and his children attend public school (or are home-schooled if Joe Six Pack is a particularly devout evangelical).

Joe the Plumber:  Joe the Plumber is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, an “uncommitted” voter who is registered as a Republican but not licensed as a plumber. Barack Obama met him during a campaign stop and talked to him for several minutes. Joe wants to buy a business that he thinks would make over $250,000, the magic number at which the Obama tax hikes kick in. Wurzelbacher actually makes about $40,000 a year, but that’s not an important point. The point is that John McCain mentioned his name 25 times during a debate, so Joe (warts and all) is now the living symbol for Joe Six Pack. Depending on what reporters dig up on him, he could end up in jail or hosting a home improvement show on TLC.

Joe Biden: Joe Biden is a Senator and Barack Obama’s running mate. Joe might have been president twenty years ago, but he made the mistake of repeating someone else’s speech almost word for word and became known as a plagiarist. It has taken him 20 years to get another shot at the White House (if Barack wins but dies) so he is making the most of it. When he isn’t using someone else’s speech, he tends to stick his foot in his mouth, so he is pretty fun to watch. Joe Biden tries to act like an Average Joe, but nobody takes him seriously.

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson: Shoeless Joe was one of the greatest baseball players ever. Even though he played in the early twentieth century, he is still ranked in the top ten for best career batting average of all time. Unfortunately, he will never be in the Hall of Fame because he apparently took money to throw the 1919 World Series, even though other players say he never met with gamblers and by all accounts he played very well in the series. He hasn’t been mentioned by name very often in this election, but when Sarah Palin exclaimed “Say it ain’t so Joe!” during the vice presidential debate, she was evoking a famous (unconfirmed) confrontation between Shoeless Joe and a young fan who was heartbroken by the thought of Jackson throwing the series.

Joe Lieberman: An Independent who won reelection to the Senate after losing in the primaries as a Democrat due mainly to his frequent support of George Bush’s stance on the Iraq war and other issues. In 2000, before his falling out with the Democrats, he was Al Gore’s running mate and came within a Supreme Court party-line vote of being Vice President. Lieberman was briefly considered as a running mate for John McCain as well, until somebody asked “seriously?” and the whole matter was dropped.

Joe Scarborough: A conservative commentator on MSNBC, which is just as thankless a job as being a liberal commentator on Fox News. People mainly watch him because they keep waiting for him to explode – literally explode. Sure, it isn’t likely, but everyone wants to be there to see it if it does happen.

Joseph Stalin: Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. He was a very naughty man. Some people think that Stalin would have dealt with the current Banking Crisis in much the same way that the U.S. Congress has, with the small exception that he would have killed all of the bankers. Interesting bit of trivia: before Stalin became General Secretary of the Communist Party, he was a bank robber. You can look it up.

Joe The Six Pack Plumber: My new nickname at work – for reasons I cannot fathom. I am, after all, an unapologetic elitist.