“You know what?” Kamala Harris growled after being forced to depart from the text of her stump speech last week amid the familiar hectoring of a handful of anti-Israel demonstrators. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
To this, the pro-Harris crowd roared with approval. That’s encouraging, but only insofar as her allies recognize that any diminution of the fanatical adoration to which they’ve treated the vice president these last three weeks risks shattering the whole artifice. Deep down, her supporters recognize that accommodating, much less courting, these elements on the fringes of progressive politics has reached the point of diminishing returns. The argument implicit in Harris’s admonition isn’t that Israel’s mission in Gaza is a moral and practical necessity that advances America’s permanent interests abroad. It’s that the protesters’ cause is a minority proposition.
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