Last week, I reported that the financial crisis enabled Democrats to attack McCain on Social Security privatization — a largely forgotten issue that could “gain traction in swing states with large elderly populations.”

This weekend, Obama hit McCain on Social Security in Florida, a state with one of the oldest demographics in the country. Seniors make up 17 percent of the Florida population, and an even higher share of the electorate.

Obama warned that if Republican privatization plans had been implemented, over the past week “millions would’ve watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes.” He also told voters that McCain “wants to gamble with your life savings.”

Even if you accept that characterization of Social Security privatization, though, it is unlikely that a McCain administration would succeed in privatizing the program. A GOP-controlled Congress could not pull off the task in 2005, coming off Bush’s reelection.

Any similar proposals would likely be D.O.A. in the next Democratic Congress.

Obama is still right to expose the pitfalls of McCain’s pro-market past. Neither candidate pulls punches when an opponent’s plan is unlikely to be implemented, either.

But these Social Security attacks are a bit like a Democratic version of the Republican attack on guns — even if a Democratic president prioritzed a huge federal crackdown on gun ownership, it would never get through Congress.

The Democrats observe: “In an AP article today, Glen Johnson highlights the difficulty John McCain is having trying to explain his long held position in support of George Bush’s failed 2005 privatization of Social Security in the wake of this week’s economic turmoil.”

The article reports that McCain’s privatization position now looks like bad policy and terrible politics:

McCain defends retirement accounts amid stock dive

Wall Street turmoil [left McCain] defending his support for privately investing Social Security money in the same markets that had tanked earlier in the week…. A headline Friday in the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader, the leading paper in that battleground state, underscored the political challenge. “Pension funds for workers take a hit,” read a story about a roughly $500 million decline the past three months in the state’s public pension fund.

McCain counters that he does not support full-bore “privatization.” He has not exactly been pushing the issue at all, recently. Social Security is unlikely to break through as a national campaign issue right now, either, but it could gain traction in swing states with large elderly populations. The Republicans’ old promises to shrink government and ‘Let The Market Decide’ just don’t have the same ring.