"He pals around with terrorists" didn't work.
"Who is the real Barack Obama?" didn't work.
So now the new rallying cry out of John McCain's camp is that Obama is a "socialist."

That's pretty funny coming from a guy who just voted in favor of a $700 billion government bailout for the U.S. banking system.

It also demonstrates a concession by McCain that he can't win this election on his own merits. His only hope, he apparently believes, is to spend the next two weeks tearing down Obama.

But history has proven, time and again, that a candidate trailing in the polls almost never pulls the upset by slinging mud in the home stretch.