To her credit, Kamala Harris has been attracting some fairly respectable crowds out on the campaign trail this week. That was the case in Arizona yesterday where she managed to attract roughly 15,000 people to an arena outside of Phoenix. Those still aren't Trump-sized crowds, but it was far better than what Joe Biden had been managing before he dropped out. Of course, not everyone was there to offer their unvarnished support for the Veep. Just as it had happened the previous day in Michigan, some of the attendees broke out into anti-Israel chants. But Harris responded differently in Arizona. She reassured the crowd that she was "working around the clock" with Joe Biden to get a ceasefire deal and a hostage release deal in Gaza. She then went on to say that she "respects your voices" in terms of Israel and Hamas, but that she and Walz needed to focus on the presidential campaign now. I'm sure that won't be comforting to anyone in Israel and it probably won't calm down the pro-Hamas wing of her party much either. (NY Post)

Vice President Kamala Harris took a moment to address anti-Israel protesters who disrupted her rally in Arizona on Friday, telling the hecklers, “I respect your voices.”

The interruption came about five minutes into Harris’ speech to a packed house at the Desert Diamond Arena, outside of Phoenix, and the 59-year-old’s response to the protesters marked a striking change in tact from her approach in Michigan on Thursday, where she shut down and scolded anti-Israel hecklers.

“Hold on a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on everybody,” Harris said as her supporters chanted, “USA, USA” in an attempt to drown out the protesters.

As noted above, that seems like a definite switch from the way she handled things in Michigan. It also seems rather backward. In Michigan, portions of the crowd broke out in chants of, "Kamala, Kamala, you can't hide. We won't vote for genocide!" Harris responded by basically shushing them and telling them, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking." But yesterday that message was converted to "I respect your voices."

The reason I described that as being "backward" is because it's Michigan where the most virulent anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters are lashing out. And the polls in Michigan are razor close. If there is one state where she may need to work harder to appease the pro-terror Democrats, that's probably the one. Conversely, there really doesn't seem to be nearly as many pro-Hamas people in Arizona. Of course, Harris is still fairly new to this whole presidential campaign trail process, so perhaps they just need to be fine-tuning the candidate in the background a bit more.

Having watched a couple of her early campaign rallies now, I will confess that Kamala Harris has somewhat surprised me thus far. She's more lively and relaxed at the podium than I expected her to be. She still breaks out into fits of the giggles too often, but her handlers seem to have worked the worst of the jagged cackling out of her. To be clear, she still comes off as a completely unserious candidate and she delivers her remarks without even mentioning the major issues facing our country right now and what she might do about them if elected. But then again, it's not as if she can run on her record because she is almost entirely lacking in any sort of record. In the few areas where she did supposedly have some responsibilities (the border, AI safeguards) she failed entirely. But for the Democrats, I suppose you run with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might wish you had.

On the plus side, it's less than three months to election day so we won't have to put up with this for too much longer. Now I'm just waiting and crossing my fingers, hoping that Donald Trump can find a way to return to some of the self-discipline and control he exhibited earlier this year and stay away from the low-hanging fruit of name-calling and racial accusations. He needs to make Kamala own and defend the Biden/Harris record over the past four years, which is an impossible task. Let's hope he can summon up the will to do so.