Same old Kamala, those darned disbedient Israelis and other commentary

It’s “increasingly evident that [Kamala] Harris is not a significantly different politician than she was five years ago,” frets Alex Shephard at The New Republic.“She is overcautious and reluctant to stake out positions,” “her priorities and approach to policy remain murky” and she is “in many ways, running the exact same campaign now that she did five years ago and hoping for a different result.”That “campaign failed in large part because she couldn’t offer a larger vision for her party or the country.”Worse, “she often doesn’t have specific answers to questions.”Indeed, “the flaws in Harris’s approach are as clear now as they were five years ago — and they could prove to be just as disastrous now as they were then.”“The Harris campaign’s entire theory of the case is wrong,” argues National Review’s Jim Geraghty: “Reminding people about what they couldn’t stand about Trump and emphasizing ‘joy’ and ‘vibes’ is not sufficient to close the deal with an electorate” that’s “been coping with runaway inflation,” a border crisis, a “post-Covid rise in crime,” and “an international scene beset by invasions, terrorism, and massacres.”Harris must “find something that hasn’t been done enough under Biden, say that it was a mistake that it wasn’t prioritized enough, and pledge [she’s] the person to get it done.Throw Biden under the bus if you have to.” “White House frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu has been a running theme this week,” bemoans Commentary’s Seth Mandel.And he “coverage revolves around the notion that Israel is disobedient.”CBS’s Bill Whitaker said to Kamala Harris: “We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course.”Wednesday’s New York Times “carries a long reflection on Biden’s inability to control events in the Middle East over the past year.”In reality, “Biden’s...