Has the Protection Racket Media recovered its sense of shame? Late last week, the New York Times briefly signaled its displeasure with Kamala Harris' attempt to offer a "vibes" campaign without any policy or media engagement. In an analysis of Donald Trump's tax-cut promises, the Gray Lady offered this headline: "Trump’s Tax Plan Could Add Trillions in Debt. Harris’s Is a Mystery." Later in the same day, they backed down, changing the second half to "Harris' Plan Tracks Biden's," even though Harris hasn't actually published any sort of plan or agenda.

Late yesterday, the Washington Post editorial board took a stronger position on the Silence of the Kams. They want Harris to start articulating an actual policy agenda, and more importantly, start taking serious questions about her candidacy and campaign:

If she hopes to prevail, Ms. Harris needs to present her ideas. The media and public have legitimate questions, and she should face them. This is a political necessity — Mr. Trump is already turning her avoidance of the media into an attack line. And elections aren’t just about winning. They’re about accumulating political capital for a particular agenda, which Ms. Harris can’t do unless she articulates one.

Considering the source -- which has been just as complicit in the Silence of the Kams as the campaign itself -- this is a smart point. Presidents-elect like to claim mandates for the agenda that got them elected, and there's no doubt that the Post would vastly prefer a Democrat agenda no matter what it might be. It at least provides the new administration with a reason to exercise whatever power they have in a cloak of legitimacy granted by the voters. A candidate without an agenda, running on "vibes," will have no real legitimacy to exercise power on policy without having allowed voters to weigh in on it.

In fact, the Post's editors are just as lost on what Harris actually plans to do if elected. She has changed positions on nearly every issue since she last ran on her own for public office in 2019. That's true of energy policy (fracking), private insurance, and border security and enforcement. The board notes that Harris advocated for the elimination of ICE in 2018 and argued in the 2019 primary-debate season that anyone crossing the border should not be prosecuted. Now Team Harris says that Kamala thinks that “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.”

The Post's editors smell a rat:

All of this moves her toward more popular positions. Still, it’s a lot of mind-changing for the public to absorb without further explanation. Without hearing Ms. Harris articulate her thought process, she runs the risk of leaving voters to wonder whether she is just shifting with the political winds or, indeed, planning to revert to previous positions after she’s won the presidency. Why, for instance, did she embrace Mr. Trump’s idea to exempt tips from taxation?

On foreign policy, Ms. Harris’s aides have denied claims by activists that she expressed openness during a private meeting to an arms embargo on Israel. She has placed added emphasis on expressing sympathy for Palestinian suffering while also supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. Both critics and supporters of Israel are reading her running-mate choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a sign that her policy might be somewhat tougher on Israel and more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Mr. Biden’s has been. She needs to tell us: Are they misreading it?

The editors even suggest that Harris has to answer for the disgrace in Afghanistan, which can't please her campaign. The board wants to know whether Harris agreed with the strategy and manner in which Biden bailed out of Kabul, and whether she's still demanding a cut in military spending. "Did she try to urge the president to keep some US troops in the country?" the editorial asks, although they fail to note the 14,000 Americans abandoned by Biden and Harris in August 2021 -- an utter disgrace that should define everyone involved, including Harris, who claimed she was the last person in the room with Biden when he made that decision.

The Post's editors don't have much positive to say about Donald Trump, of course, accusing him of "regularly spouting falsehoods and wild rhetoric." However, they point out what we point out on this issue, including at the National Association of Black Journalists, which is that Trump at least has the courage to take questions from reporters -- including in hostile environments like the NABJ. Harris is hiding instead, and the Post is calling her out for it.

This is all pretty much cheap talk, of course, until the editors start refusing to cooperate with Harris' "vibes" strategy. Will their reporters start refusing to go off the record on Air Force Two, for instance? Will they start demanding in those gaggles that Harris and Walz answer policy questions on the record? Until that happens, this is just an empty signal to protect their own credibility ... or what's left of it.