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Warren Just Asked Democrats to Shoot the Moon

Warren Just Asked Democrats to Shoot the Moon

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- “Corruption has put our planet at risk. Corruption has broken our economy. And corruption is breaking our democracy,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said at a New York City rally in September. Warren was making the case that President Donald Trump is an existential threat to the American project. Every credible Democratic candidate for president more or less agrees.

But Democrats are not competing against Trump right now. They are competing against one another. The time-honored way of dealing with that is to do all you can to win the primary race, then worry about the general election another day. That appears to be Warren’s tack in adopting a detailed Medicare for All plan. She would publicly finance health care for every American, end private health insurance and quite possibly destroy her chance of winning a general election.

The argument against such an approach is simple. If Trump’s presidency is an existential risk, and Medicare for All increases the likelihood of his re-election, then Medicare for All is an existential risk.

Many of the powerful interests offended by Warren’s plan — she would tax Wall Street traders, investors, billionaires, corporations and the everyday rich — would never support her anyway. She has, however, just given them new incentives to oppose her candidacy while also jabbing powerful elements of the health-care industry with the policy equivalent of an electric cattle prod.

Warren welcomes such enemies. It’s part of her brand. It helps establish the contrasts that highlight her agenda of “big structural change.” Fine. But at the same time, Warren has now opened a new front in the 2020 campaign. It’s a vast and perilous battleground.

More than 150 million Americans have private health insurance provided by employers. Should Warren win the Democratic nomination, she will force them all to consider whether the private insurance they have in hand is better than the government plan she is dangling at the end of a long stick. Instead of Democrats enjoying a clear advantage as the party identified with health-care security, they would promptly become the party identified with disruption and uncertainty.

Some with employer insurance will be fierce Democratic partisans who trust Warren. Others will be MAGA heads whose fealty to Trump is unshakable. Still others will be doubters who see no way such a plan would ever get through Congress.

But a large cohort of voters have views that are less fixed. From time to time those views decide a presidential election. Trump and his allies, not all of whom will be American, will wage a relentless campaign aimed at such voters, and with a quintessentially Trumpian regard for truth.

Warren is now asking Democratic voters to trust that she will have the resources, skill and luck to counter that barrage and convince millions of voters that they have nothing to fear from retooling $52 trillion in health-care spending over a decade.

Attacks on health care have a special salience, as previous campaigns confirm. It’s not hard to understand why: Access to quality health care is, in a very real sense, access to life itself.

Warren has run a shrewd and competent campaign. She may be the best campaigner the Democrats have. It’s also possible that she has concluded that Medicare for All is not just a primary election gambit but a strategic asset in a general election against Trump – despite the dim prognostications of the likes of me.

If she wins both the primary and general contests on the strength of her health-care platform, she will be hailed as a genius, and become president. If, however, she wins the former and loses the latter, her loss will enable a wave of authoritarian corruption from which the U.S. will not soon recover.

Each day, Trump and Republicans in Congress confirm the stakes. No Democratic candidate is a sure bet. But Warren has just ratcheted up the risk associated with her candidacy. Are Democrats feeling lucky?

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

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