It is the year 2017, a full three years out from the next presidential election, and yet we are already talking about 2020. We dream of a savior, and alas for the left, the Democratic Party is responsible for producing one.

Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, is widely considered one of the party’s rising stars, with as good a chance as anybody else at this very early stage to earn its nomination in 2020. And that possibility is a problem for the left. “The former attorney general of California, Harris is mistrusted by the left mostly because of her roots as a prosecutor,” Ryan Cooper wrote in an August 3 piece for The Week that also criticized two other theoretical candidates, Senator Cory Booker and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

This article ignited days of outrage, much of which revolved around the issue of race, but that outrage threatens to obscure a legitimate point. Harris has a deeply troubling record: As a district attorney, she implemented a law that penalized the parents of truant children with a fine of up to $2,000 and a year in jail. Later, as California’s attorney general, Harris fought a transgender prisoner’s attempts to access necessary health care. And her record on prosecuting financial crimes is poor, particularly her decision to refrain from going after OneWest Bank for allegedly breaking foreclosure laws. And she’s not the only one—as David Dayen wrote for the New Republic, virtually the entire Democratic Party has been criminally negligent when it comes to taking on corporate malfeasance during the housing crisis.

The Democratic Party hasn’t met the left’s standards in this area, and that is a problem with the party, not the left. But all of this prompts a question: Under what circumstances could the left accept a flawed candidate for high office?

By questioning Harris and the party’s other rising stars, the left performs necessary political work.

To understand where the left might draw that line, it is necessary to first understand the substance of its critique. By questioning Harris and the party’s other rising stars, the left performs necessary political work. It’s vital to criticize Harris’s record as a prosecutor, Cory Booker’s ties to pharmaceutical companies and school reform groups, and Deval Patrick’s work for Bain Capital, as Cooper did in his article for The Week. The problem of extreme income inequality in this country, in which the vast majority of wealth goes to the very people these politicians have either protected, solicited, or worked for, can only be combatted with a similarly drastic redistribution of wealth. Activists are right to wonder if a Patrick or a Booker will deliver the changes the country needs.