Why "Medicare for all" will sink the Democrats

Privately, many moderate Democratic senators are harshly critical of Sanders’s tactics. “It’s radioactive for me,” one Democrat facing re-election in 2018 told me.

But publicly, even Democratic senators who have declined to endorse Medicare for All have done so in measured terms to avoid antagonizing the progressives.

“The first thing has to be to protect the health care people have now and stabilize markets,” said Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Instead of Medicare for All, we Democrats should be focused on “Better Jobs for All” — big ideas for addressing our most pressing economic challenge. That is: the wage stagnation that has left too many Americans behind, particularly white working-class men.