Can Kamala Harris improve her standing with voters? Or does she come into the competitive presidential race as high as she'll get? I've written about Harris' prospects several times over the last few weeks since the Dump Biden movement began, warning Democrats that Harris turned out to be poor at it in 2019, and then showed even less competence after becoming Vice President. 

Just to recall, here's her favorability chart from RCP. Harris is not starting from scratch, nor does she begin with much good will from the electorate:

If history and starting points mean anything -- and sometimes they mean less than we expect -- then Democrats just dug themselves a deep hole. Veteran Republican campaign strategist and analyst Alex Castellanos sees the same problem as I have. In a short video he published earlier today, Castellanos predicted that we've already seen "peak Kamala" in the polls, and not just because of a lack of political talent at this level.

Rather, Castellanos makes the observation that Harris can't modulate her radical agenda. There are too many clips of her pushing to defund the police, end fracking, and abolish ICE and immigration enforcement (among other radical positions) to counter them with a shift to the center. She doesn't have the Clintonian talent to triangulate convincingly, even if Harris were so inclined, Castellanos argues:

"This is Peak Kamala. This is the best moment, the best days of her campaign. It goes downhill from here," says veteran political consultant Alex Castellanos. "She can't win as the Kamala Harris who who wanted to defund police, contributes bail money to arsonists, wants to… pic.twitter.com/gpNzKdEl4p

— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) July 25, 2024

"She can't win as the Kamala Harris who who wanted to defund police, contributes bail money to arsonists, wants to abolish ICE. That's way out of the mainstream."

Of course, Harris could recognize that at some point and attempt to tack back to the center. However, just in the time that Harris became the presumptive nominee, she has shown no inclination to do so. At a time when Harris needs to establish herself on foreign policy -- which Joe Biden ran entirely himself -- she joined the far-Left of her party to snub the prime minister of a key strategic ally and went to speak to a sorority instead. And when the far-Left riots began on the streets of DC over Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress, it took Harris 24 hours to issue a statement of condemnation over their violence. 

By contrast, the nominee she replaced actually understands the protocols of foreign policy, even if his own policies are just as bad as Harris':

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets President Joe Biden in the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/iVQDEKwxfB

— Bern Dorfman (@BernDorfman) July 25, 2024

Imagine what this kind of a photo op could have done for Harris' gravitas on foreign policy. Instead, she'd rather talk to a sorority. It's not just her radical politics; it's also Harris' instincts. Both of them are electoral poison, and the latter clearly is interfering with her ability to grasp the former. 

Her radical Leftism is enough to doom her, Judge Glock writes at City Journal, and it's all on the record:

In 2017, Harris co-sponsored Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill, which would have ended private insurance in America; “It’s just the right thing to do,” she said of her support for the bill. In preparation for her 2020 presidential campaign, she released a new plan that still would have extended Medicare to all Americans but that allowed private insurers to offer a plan within the government-run system. Both proposals were on the left of the Democratic Party, even the increasingly liberal party of the past five years.

Indeed, Harris was not shy about tacking further left than her progressive compatriots. Whereas Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2019 “FAMILY Act” would have provided three months of paid family leave at 66 percent of workers’ salaries on taxpayers’ dime, Harris proposed supporting up to six months of leave at up to 100 percent of workers’ income. She introduced the “Housing Is Infrastructure Act” in 2019, which would have spent $100 billion on new housing, including $70 billion set aside for publicly owned units. She also supported Sanders’s plan to make community colleges and even four-year public universities free for students from low- and middle-income families, despite an exorbitant price tag that Sanders said would amount to “at least $48 billion per year.”

The then-California senator was especially radical during the pandemic. For example, she proposed $2,000 per month per person in free cash for the vast majority of U.S. households. She also introduced a bill that would have capped price increases at 10 percent during national emergencies. Had it been in force amid the inflationary period after the pandemic, such a policy could have created massive shortages across the economy.

That earned her the GovTrack's designation as the most liberal Senator of her time (which hasn't been memory-holed as first reported). The media may ignore or spin these radical positions but they are not erasable, as Harris was very glib about pushing them on camera. Castellanos' prediction is by far the safest bet -- as America gets to know Harris, they'll like her less and less, especially in swing states not dominated by the Academia proto-Marxist elitist bubble.

Of course, this is only an educated guess, not necessarily a prophecy. Voters need to hear about Harris' radicalism before they can factor it into their ballot decisions. The media isn't likely to promote that part of Harris' candidacy, so how can voters find out about it? Well ...

Trump slams Kamala Harris for supporting the Minnesota Freedom Fund: "Kamala Harris wants to be the president for savage criminals and illegal aliens. I will be the president for law-abiding Americans of every race, religion, color and creed." pic.twitter.com/q3ahZFv0WK

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) July 25, 2024