MARTIN O’MALLEY: ‘CLINTON HAS CHANGED HER POSITION ON VIRTUALLY EVERY DEFINING ISSUE.’ Curiously, he doesn’t mean it as a compliment, despite appearing on Democrat house organ MSNBC:

“A weathervane shifts its positions in the wind. Effective leaders do not. I am clear about my principles I know where I stand. I was against the Trans Pacific Partnership 8 months ago. Hillary Clinton has changed her position on virtually every defining issue in this race – except for one, and that’s to protect the big banks on Wall Street and go about with business as usual. I don’t think that’s what the people of our country are looking for. I have the independence, I have the backbone, to stand up for what our nation needs. That’s what people are going to see now that it’s down to a three person race.”

O’Malley knows he’s competing in a three-person race to win the support of the Democrat base, doesn’t he? Because from Iraq to gay marriage to health care to trade agreements to gun control, Democrat voters view flip-flops and being lied to as a sign of strength from their politicians. Or as Mark Steyn noted six years ago:

Democrats win by pretending to be to the right of who they really are. Their base understands and accepts this. Thus, when Democrat candidates profess to believe that “marriage is between a man and a woman” or to be “personally passionately opposed to abortion” or even to favor “the good war” in Afghanistan and if necessary invade Pakistan, their base hears this as a necessary rhetorical genuflection to the knuckledragging masses but one that will be conveniently discarded on the first day in office.

In modern terms, it’s a phenomenon that dates at least back to the aftermath of Walter Mondale getting creamed in 1984 after promising to raise taxes, and arguably to Jimmy Carter’s centrist campaign in 1976 – though its roots date much, much further back in time than that.