The young progressives who might make a difference on college campuses across the purple states don’t share your instinctive acceptance of Israel as a natural ally of the US in the region, and could generally care less about hezbullah’s relationship with Iran. They see an extension of Israeli war crimes in the region. It’s hard to shake the image of an obedient daughter obliterated because the Israeli military had to use their Trojan horse immediately.

But those folks' opinions aren't going to be changed by engaging with Hezbollah. The faction within the Democratic party that's super-engaged on this issue isn't going to have their attitudes changed, or their hands strengthened, by opening up the conflict with Hezbollah.

That's the point. Compared to what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank, the impact on "young progressives who might make a difference on college campuses" from the engagement with Hezbollah is as trivial as a mousefart in a hurricane. And for the broader Democratic party, it makes it easier to minimize the disruption to the election effort. The broader the conflict, the less that any of the other players in the Democratic party have to treat the hostilities as solely about the Palestinians. In a close election, every issue is important - but even given that, the significance of "war with Hezbollah" (rather than with Hamas) is going to be so far down the list as to be trivial.

And there is nothing silly about Bibi’s calculus. As I said, a trump victory seals settler rule over the Israeli state, and the settler coalition has no qualms about waging total war on the Palestinian people and their allies in the region. A Harris victory might spell the end of Bibi, or at least the end of his free reign.

You're vastly overstating how decisive the US Administration matters to Netanyahu's fate, and implicitly massively overstating the role that he can play in affecting the electoral outcome here. Trump can't save Bibi if he loses control of the domestic political situation, and Harris can't doom him if he has the support of the electorate. And Netanyahu can have only the tiniest, barest, smallest impact on the U.S. election - which will almost certainly be minor compared to our domestic politics.

IOW, going to war with Hezbollah will certainly be something very important to the Israeli electorate, and certainly something that it utterly unimportant to the US electorate. Given that reality, it would indeed be silly for Netanyahu to base his decision making based on speculation about the US electorate rather than the impact on the Israeli electorate.