Q. When is a flip-flop not a flip-flop?

A. When it's a Democrat who's gone flipped like Simone Biles, and a liberal-media member is defending it!

On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, MSNBC political analyst Kimberly Atkins Stohr insisted Kamala's "quote-unquote" [see air quotes in screencap] policy changes were not a "shift." It was just "pragmatism."

She loved dismissing Trump's "racist attacks on her."

ATKINS STOHR: I love the way she dispensed with questions about Donald Trump's racist attacks on her. That is not her business, it is is. I like the way she talked about how her positions have quote-unquote 'changed.' That sounds like pragmatism. She went to the White House and realized the goals of furthering climate policy takes compromise and brings people to the table. That is pragmatic to some, that is not a shift. A shift is Trump being for an abortion ban after saying he was against it.

So despite being in various political positions for decades, it hadn't dawned on Kamala that compromise is required in politics until she became Biden's veep? Riiight!  

Harris's flip-flops are a function of cynicism, not pragmatism. Say one thing in 2019 when you're fishing for progressive voters in the Democrat primary. Say the opposite in 2024 when you're trying to win a general election and need to appeal to a wider swath of the electorate.

Harris is far from the first candidate to have changed positions for political purposes. Trump himself was pro-choice before running for president -- although he at least has offered a plausible explanation for his shift, in terms of having seen and considered sonograms of unborn children. 

In her interview with Bash, Harris didn't even attempt to explain how she went from being ardently in favor of banning fracking to opposing such a ban -- until she needed to carry Pennsylvania.

Atkins Stohr also managed to work the obligatory accusation of racism into her discussion of Harris' interview, blasting

"The narrative that she needed Governor Walz there as some sort of crutch. Because God forbid, a black woman be able to form complete sentences in an interview by herself."

The notion that Kamala might need The Coach to play defense for her sprang not from racism, but from her history of serving up bewildering word salads, and disastrous responses to questions she should surely have anticipated, as in her tangle with Lester Holt over her failure to have visited the border.

PS: Atkins Stohr's "political analyst" skills were on full display in her Boston Globe column, written after Biden's disastrous debate. Title: "Biden Dropping Out Is A Fantasy." Whoops!