The more you learn about Kamala Harris, the more formidable she appears. She is an amazing amalgam of different elements — highly educated elite meritocrat, Oakland street fighter, crusading, rough-elbow prosecutor, canny machine pol and telegenic rhetorical brawler.

She is also probably the toughest and most hard-nosed progressive on the scene right now.

Some on the left are criticizing Harris because she was an aggressive prosecutor for years, participating in the era of mass incarceration. But as the Democratic Party has moved left ideologically, and grown more suspicious of cops and prosecutors, it has also hardened emotionally.

Democratic primary voters may decide that if they are going to take on Donald Trump, they’re going to want the roughest, most confrontational gladiator they can get. After they see how, well, direct she can be, they may decide that person is Kamala Harris.

Harris is very much a product of the highly educated progressive coastal elite. Her father is a professor at Stanford. Her mother, who was a breast cancer researcher, got her Ph.D. at 25. Harris grew up with ballet, violin, French horn and perfectionism.