Obama's The Loser In Down and Dirty Campaign

With much of the media fawning over Obama like a bunch of demented high school kids, the McCain campaign has finally come out fighting and Obama has fallen into the trap. 

The campaign is getting down and dirty. McCain is having to do what the media should have been doing a long while ago - holding a candle up to the characters of both candidates and probing for weaknesses. 

Until now, the Obama campaign has kept its cool. Generally they've risen above the claims. 

Links with terrorist, Ayes, black power pastor, Wright and crook, Rezo were cast aside as lies and smears. And, with the media backing, they go away with it.

Palin's attack, accusing Obama of "palling around" with unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist, William Ayers, brought a swift rebuttal. That's to be expected. But they then followed it through with counter-claims. A bad move from the Obama camp, it played into McCain's hands. 

It was a weak attack. McCain was one of five senators investigated 20 years ago by the Senate over Arizona tycoon Charles Keating, who was convicted of fraud after his bank collapsed.

But McCain's Keating and Palin's own 'Troopergate' are spot news. Headlines today, forgotten tomorrow. But it gives the McCain camp the excuse to hit back even harder. And Obama has more to lose.

It was observed here a while ago that the McCain strategy is all in the timing. First talk up the strengths of your candidate's character - a Vietnam war hero - then demolish the character of the opponent. 

With a month to go and flagging in the polls, the McCain team can unleash its final shots in a tightly controlled campaign grid. 

Links with Ayers and the Annenberg Foundation was the first shot, despite the media's best efforts to play down Ayres as just a "hippy radial". 

This was a Weatherman - a domestic terrorist whose bombing campaign struck fear into the heart of the US establishment at the time of the Vietnam war. Obama served on a charity board with Ayers. His links to him are much more than "a guy who lives in my neighbourhood.’' 

More of Obama's dodgy Chicago characters won't be far behind. Attack-dog Palin has already said voters should pay more attention to Obama's relationship with his former church pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. By voters, she means the McCain campaign.

Expect more on Obama’s key role in Ayers’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), his two-decade membership of a Black Power church and his relationship with fraudster, Tony Rezko, along with Obama's true source of funding and most importantly, his background and eligibility to run for president. 

Counter attacks with revelations over skeleton's in both Palin's and McCain's cupboards pale into insignificance. 

Both sides are getting down and dirty and that's just how it should be when you are about to elect the most powerful person on the planet. 

Tonight both presidential candidates square up for round two of their TV debates. 

This election will be decided on the trust and the strength of character of both candidates in the closing few weeks of the campaign.