Harris effectively won her party’s nomination within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement Sunday that he would not seek reelection. In other words: she does not need to please the anti-Israel base of her party in order to win a primary.

Instead, what Harris needs to do is spend the precious 100 days before the election defining herself before the nation. Simply sitting behind the rostrum as the leader of the Jewish state delivered a stirring address about how his country’s enemies were also America’s would have neutralized the Trump campaign’s efforts to paint the vice president as a San Francisco socialist who is out of touch with everyday people. 

“Nobody knows where Kamala Harris stands on Israel,” former GOP foreign policy adviser Dan Senor told The Free Press. “She’s a blank slate. This was a high-profile opportunity to define herself on this issue, and she took a pass.”