I don't know if he and his campaign understand that, for some voters (blue collar, older, women, Hispanic/Latino, rural) having a D after his name won't be enough to guarantee their vote.  And his dash to the right/middle before shoring up these voters sets him up to look like he's pandering when he finds he has to backtrack to get the people he should have gotten FIRST!

Sure, I'll grant you that with parsing that yes, he technically didn't flip flop on the issue, but he emphasized the he would be C-in-C and that he would take the troops out on his terms.  (And he'd be right, unless we want the Generals to control the Fed. Govt., and I know none of us want that.  Well, maybe Gen. Clark, but that's not exactly what I meant.)  He said that he would get them out faster than Clinton, and he stressed that MUCH more than the conditions on the ground stuff.  Maybe we heard it the way we heard it because that's what he wanted us to hear!  

Hey, he is a pol, but I don't remember most of the blogs acknowledging that, instead they destroyed (or tried to at least, they got their man, but they did not destroy her) Clinton as a Republican hack who wanted our troops to die.  I know that is your general point, that issues should drive the blogosphere, not personalities.  But you just have to excuse those of us who saw a good and decent public servant raked mercilessly over the coals just so that Obama could do exactly what she would do getting a wee bit mad at him for it.  Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" was a 100% accurate and honest statement, but it didn't do him one bit of good, did it?  So even if Obama is being 100% honest and accurate on his Iraq position, which he is, it hurts him because it seems like waffling.  

IMHO at least.

He "refines his positions artfully."

Pretty phrasing, isn't it.

One is something like "which party is right on a particular issue this election cycle?" which the Dems are leading in vigorously (the public trusts us on 9 of the top 10 issues).

Second is the real "war" for issues by which a party fights for what are planks of their platform. Take some conservatives on the right who are taking some pretty ugly steps against their nominee to keep things like global warming and alternative fuel investment out of the Republican platform. The right, though the political climate is sucky for them, still fight pretty hard for their issues. Compare that with the Left, and you see a lot less people actually FIGHTING for their issues. It's partly due to the nature of Obama's campaign (one which is based on intangibles and so support has broad brushstrokes) and partly due to the nature of the post-2000 Democratic Party by which we say "oh that's nice" and then roll over and die on most anything.

As I recall there were only two candidate that were for bringing ALL the troops home and ending the war.  They were Kucinich and Gravel.

Of the top tier candidates Obama, Clinton and Edwards, there was very little difference in positions, although Edwards plan was more aggressive in getting more troops out sooner.  And, any troops left in the area according to Edwards, were to be located in a neighboring coutry instead of directly in Iraq.  Edwards kept saying in debates he would have ALL combat troops OUT of Iraq and always challenged Obama and Clinton on the fact that they planned to leave many combat troops in Iraq.

Both Obama and Clinotn countered Edwards by saying the combat troops they would leave in Irag would be there just to contend with left over pieces of AlQaeda.  Plus they would have troops to protect the embassy, contractors and finish training Iraqis.

The only difference I ever saw between Obama and Clinton's plans were that Obama always said it would take 16 months to get the troops out at a rate of removing 1 - 2 brigades per month.  Clinton always said she would start removing the troops at 1 - 2 brigades per month within 60 days of taking office.  But, she would never say how many months it would take.  But, since they both would be working in an environment with the same number of brigades, the fact that one did the math and the other didn't never seemed like much of a difference to me.

Neither Obama or Clinton ever gave an actual number of how many troops their plans would LEAVE in Iraq.  So, their supporters were always free to imagine what ever made them happy.  There seems to be an abundance of this ability among hard core Obama supporters anyway.

I assume you have seen the recent polling where voters declare by a 2-1 margin that the next President's priority should be "bringing the troops home" rather than "winning the war."  That's a pretty conclusive result, considering it's not like the numbers just got that overnight.

The problem is that Obama laid out a pretty concrete position in order to win the bidding war in the Democratic primary and has been trying ever since to send out signals that he doesn't really stand behind it.  Voters pick up on the cues a lot more than they sit there and parse the precise language.  I'm so tired of listening to people who buy the "responsible" flim-flam and insist that as long as Obama continues to say he'll do the responsible thing, he hasn't shifted one iota.  The "responsible thing" could be literally anything.

Obama was supposed to be campaigning in Charlotte last night on behalf of Beverly Perdue.  His airplane had mechanical trouble out of Chicago and landed (for some reason I don't understand, it not being on the route) in Saint Louis at 9:51.  With all day to find alternate transportation to Charlotte, the campaign decided instead to phone in the speech.

Which would've been great if he could have remembered the name of the lady he was campaigning for.