The consensus among wonks is that Democratic politicians who support Medicare for All are saddling themselves with an unpopular policy. Never mind whether they're supporting an effective policy; it's considered gauche for savvy pundit types to evince concern over the hoi polloi. No, the tried and true know that the electoral fortunes of political elites is America's paramount concern. And so, with a certain amount of breathlessness, the end of Kamala Harris's candidacy and the recent drop in Elizabeth Warren's poll numbers have been held up as new evidence of this most important dynamic.
A Daily Beast article in November quoted the always looming and ever-fretful senior Democrats describing Medicare for All as “fucking poison,” adding: “You touch it, you turn to dust.” (As of publication, Bernie Sanders remains in solid corporeal form and in second place in polls nationally.) A Politico article this week referred to the “casualty list” of presidential candidates harmed by having tangled with single-payer. On the left, different explanations have arisen: Harris and Warren were not harmed by endorsing single-payer but by walking back their initial endorsements. A Jacobin article suggested that Harris was actually more harmed by her “flip-flopping” than by supporting single-payer in the first place, as was Warren, and argued that voters “can tell the difference between candidates who are ironclad supporters of a policy because they believe it's the right thing to do, and candidates who are calibrating their message to avoid criticism and please as many people as possible.”
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