Ha! I guess 2006 didn’t teach the dems jack-shit. “Hey, just elect us and we’ll end that nasty ol’ war that doesnt’t really affect you much at all, we sure will.”

Obama may not mind conveying the impression that he is insincere at all. Much of his base will vote for him no matter what, even they know deep in their hearts that his position on the war depends on political expediency. Moreover, some Republicans may vote Obama figuring that his antiwar stance is insincere anyway. So even if no one believes anything he says about the war enough people are going to vote for him any because they believe they know what he “really” means. Or at least they think they do. What’s self-evident is that in the situation the last laugh will be Obama’s by definition.

Obama once described himself as a “blank canvas” on which people could project their aspirations. But maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s a movie multiplex where several movies can be showing all at once. And he can collect tickets at every single entrance. One might ask how any candidate can run on this basis. But PT Barnum believed that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”. Who’s to say Obama’s strategy won’t pay off? As Glenn Reynolds recently put it, it’s not as if people don’t know they’re being lied to. Obama knows what certain voters really want and he’s prepared to give it to them.