Since John McCain is suggesting that Obama is secretly plotting to seize the wealth of masses of hard-working plumbers, builders and hockey moms in order to transfer it to lazy poor people, this new Gallup poll seems significant:

The latest polling, taken amid McCain's big Joe the Plumber assault, shows that 58% favor a fairer distribution of wealth than exists now, while only 37% say the current distribution is equitable. While the poll does show that only 46% favor "heavy taxes on the rich," that's not how Obama would describe his plan, obviously.

Keep in mind that McCain is directly attacking Obama for his generic support for the mere idea of spreading the wealth and of the basic government function of redistribution. As Matthew Yglesias puts it: "A large majority of Americans have favored spreading the wealth around."

I'd only add that there's obviously more to McCain's attack than an effort to have a good-faith discussion about economic policies. Just as with the Ayers attack, this particular assault is really about suggesting that Obama harbors secret and vague radical schemes, whether it's undermining American strength and the war on terror from within or sapping the American economy with.shadowy wealth-transfer schemes that will take your money away. It's just more of the "risky unknown" stuff.

Late Update: Steve Benen adds an important point about the real goals of McCain's "spread the wealth" attack.

Over at TNR's The Plank, there's some more good push-back against John McCain's ridiculous "Barack the redistributor" attacks yesterday over that 2001 interview Barack Obama gave in which he allegedly called for the mass transfer of wealth from hard-working Americans to lazy poor people.

Here's Jonathan Chait:

Need I point out that literally having every any government at all involves taking somebody's money and giving it to somebody else? Even the more restrivtive definition of redistribution -- using government to create a less unequal distribution of wealth -- has been going on for a century. If McCain is really opposed to redistribution, then that means he thinks the rich should get back a dollar in spending for every dollar they pay in taxes.

Obama adviser Cass Sunstein also has a good takedown.

It's ridiculous, of course, to even be debating the substance of McCain's arguments. Unless McCain's plan upon taking office is to disband the entire Federal government and fire himself, McCain is a redistributionist, too.

The real significance of this episode is that it's yet another reminder of just how out of touch with the public mood McCain the Redistributor is. From the transparently bogus campaign suspension to the selection of Palin to the Joe the Plumber nonsense to this latest, McCain's campaign has been little more than a series of gimmicks that have revealed him to be fundamentally unseriousness in a way that's completely at odds with the apparent yearnings of the public at this current juncture.

Obama, by contrast, has consistently projected a level of seriousness in sync with the public mood, the challenges ahead, and the gravity of this historical moment.

Call it the Seriousness Gap. It's a key reason Obama is winning.

An Indiana reader reports to us that John McCain is now up on the air on network TV in the state -- a significant development, because it suggests that McCain is being forced to spend valuable cash on defense in yet another red state as time runs out.

Tim Horst, a church musician, says he saw McCain's "Joe the Plumber" ad -- which attacks Obama on taxes -- running on WEVV, a CBS affiliate in southern Indiana, for the first time this morning. That's network TV, not national cable, so the spot represents a buy in the state.

Previously, the Republican National Committee had been advertising Indiana, but the McCain campaign hadn't spent any money here.

The Indiana spot is the latest sign that McCain is shifting cash out of blue toss-up states and into red tossups or even reliably red states. As we reported here yesterday, McCain is scaling down his ad buys in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and upping them in Virginia and Florida -- and, now, Indiana. Here's the spot:

Neither WEVV nor the McCain campaign had a comment. We'll bring you more on the size of the buy if we can get it.

It looks like yet another McCain campaign stunt may be proving a flop, at least in two key battleground states.

Check out these great numbers buried in a new Suffolk University poll of Ohio and Missouri, which tests the impact of McCain's frequent claim that Barack Obama wants to pick Joe the Plumber's pocket in order to further his shadowy socialist and redistributionist agenda:

In Ohio, 68 percent of respondents said they recognized "Joe the Plumber," but only 6 percent said that Joe's story will make them more likely to vote McCain; 4 percent were more likely to vote for Obama; and 85 percent were not affected.

A similar finding was recorded in Missouri, where 80 percent had heard of the presidential plumber; 8 percent were more likely to vote McCain; 3 percent more likely to vote Obama; and 86 percent not affected by his story.

That's pretty consistent. In both states -- both Bush states -- all of one-tenth of the voters who know who Joe the Plumber is said it made them more likely to back McCain. And in both states, huge, huge majorities of around 85% say the Joe mentions make no difference.

It's worth pointing out that McCain's "Joe the Plumber" gambit isn't just some throwaway one-off gag. It's a central pillar of McCain's closing argument on the economy, which is likely to decide this election. He invokes Joe at just about every rally. And his campaign even blasted out an email to supporters today asking them to tell the campaign how they are each "Joe the Plumber," with the possibility that the best could end up in an ad!

But if this poll is any indication, Joe the Plumber's coattails won't be enough to rescue McCain -- in two of his must-win states.

McCain just unleashed a broad attack on Obama that the McCain campaign clearly labored greatly over in advance: Joe The Plumber, someone Obama encountered on the trail recently, doesn't want Obama to hike his taxes and spread it around with his redistributionist agenda, because this would sap Joe The Plumber's ability to buy a small business.

Obama countered by pointing out that McCain's lying: Obama's plan won't hike taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

It's worth pointing out that the McCain campaign has been trying to convince the Joe-The-Plumbers of the world for months and months that Obama wants to raise their taxes.

Now, I don't know what the Joe The Plumber McCain is referring to thinks. But more broadly, the Joe-The-Plumbers of the world aren't buying: Yesterday's New York Times poll found that more respondents think McCain will hike their taxes than Obama will.

Maybe if McCain repeats the words "Joe The Plumber" enough times, this will change, but I doubt it.