Michael Brendan Dougherty writes for National Review Online about response to Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren’s health care proposals.
Elizabeth Warren has decided to be very, very specific. Her whole campaign has been a slogan about disclosure: “I have a plan for that,” she says. And her supporters go out into social media and (presumably) the real world and intervene in political conversations to say, “Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that.”
It seemed that this disclosure was meant to do a few things. First, it was meant to build on Elizabeth Warren’s reputation as an academic who does the intellectual spadework. That could appeal to the upwardly mobile, educated voters who have an affinity with her, and the sectors of the managerial class that are such an important part of the Democratic party. Second, it was a way of giving credibility to her continuing leftward shift. Many Bernie supporters are college-educated, but they might appreciate someone who seems to be dedicating thought to the mechanics of social democracy.
And for a few minutes, it seemed to work. Warren’s wealth tax was “the breakout economic proposal in the Democratic presidential primary race,” the New York Times assured us. More popular than its rivals. More popular than tax cuts. Warren was rising in the polls!
But all that changed when Warren rolled out the Medicare for All Plan, her scheme for raising the revenue to pay for its scores of trillions of dollars of additional cost to the federal budget, and her political strategy for achieving it. Which included more wealth taxes. She was going to begin canceling all private insurance policies. What would the tens of thousands of people who work in the health-insurance industry do? They’ll do property and life insurance, she said. Huh?
