McCain, Democrats, and Abortion: A Riddle Without an Answer

Here’s a riddle:

A number of Democrats and swing voters apparently think that McCain is moderate on abortion and Roe v. Wade. He is not.
Damon Linker points out that most Americans are moderate:

Just below 20 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all cases and circumstances. A slightly smaller number believe it should be illegal in all cases and circumstances. The rest (roughly 60 percent) think it should “usually” be legal or “usually” illegal, showing that the views of a solid majority of Americans confound the purists on both sides of the spectrum. And yet both parties insist on sticking to their extreme positions.

Herein lies the question: how does the Obama campaign take that perceived middle ground from Obama, without angering further the women who he is already at risk of losing because of the Clinton scenario?

I’m not sure there’s an answer. Perhaps the best answer for Obama is to make this a fight of the extremes. Yet that will probably favor McCain, since apparently a lot of people already believe he’s a moderate. It’ll take some real ju-jitsu to make this perception go away.

This underlines, though, the desparate need of Democrats to define McCain over the next 50 hours.