[update: oops! too much time away from the keyboard! links now added]

After Barack Obama’s latest about-face on a position—this time it’s abortion—Ann Althouse asks the pertinent question [emphasis in original]:

So as long as a woman can get her “blues” classified by a medical health professional as “depression,” she has a right to a late term abortion no matter how strongly the majority of citizens feel about the immorality of destroying a fully viable human entity? And that’s rigorous?

Incredible. That would be incredible even without the prior inconsistent statement.

Really. Does he think we are idiots?

And one of her commenters has an interesting reply, which I’ll break down into two parts:

He doesn’t think we are idiots. He thinks that most people will not find out all of the details, through a combination of their own apathy and favorable, for him, press coverage.

Check. Only anti- or un-social people who prefer the companionship of the blogosphere to overheated Fourth of July family picnics are assiduously gathering the evidence of Obama’s betrayal of his base or (or are, conversely, gallantly coming to the aid of their hero by constantly reversing their own political positions—yet again—to keep up with the reversals of the Obama Messiah).

The commenter continues:

And he also thinks that, of those who will find out about all of the instances like this, that those on the left won’t care and will vote for him anyway, and those on the right wouldn’t vote for him anyway, and the ones in the middle will likely not decide based on things like this.

He’s probably right.

Hmm. I was with the commenter all the way till that last nod toward Obama’s assessment of the situation. I think Obama is right in assessing the populace’s general lack of interest in politics (except in party affiliation, which does appeal to a lot of people, just as rooting for a certain team over another team appeals to others).

But no one knows how people are influenced to vote. Obama, his esoteric cultural tastes notwithstanding, has shown himself to be less than original, and way less than scintillating, in his “thinking” about demographics and social groups.

Whatever. I am so over this campaign.