BUTTE, Mont. AP - Is Barack Obama close to being shadowed by giant flip-flops and, worse, having the image stick with people all the way to the voting booth?

Obama said his overall problem is that he was incorrectly tagged to begin with as being a product solely of his party's left wing, so that statements displaying a broad ideological range are portrayed as shifts when they are not. "When I simply describe what has been my position consistently, then suddenly people act surprised," he lamented earlier this week.