[T]hey should seek incremental change on health care (Bring back the public option!) and focus their main efforts on other issues — that is,... Bernie Sanders is wrong about this and Hillary Clinton is right. If we could start from scratch, many, perhaps most, health economists would recommend single-payer, a Medicare-type program covering everyone. But single-payer wasn’t a politically feasible goal in America, for three big reasons that aren’t going away.
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So progressives must set some priorities. And it’s really hard to see, given this picture, why it makes any sense to spend political capital on a quixotic attempt at a do-over, not of a political failure, but of health reform — their biggest victory in many years.
(I’d also like to give a hat tip to our invaluable TeacherKen’s diary on Krugman’s column).
Obviously, you ignore Krugman’s predictions of what will and won’t happen at your peril. And in this case, as usual, he’s got the prediction part right: even if Sanders wins, there’s no way single payer will pass congress any time in the next 2-4 years.
But does that mean that Sanders is wrong and Clinton is right? That’s a question of ethics and pragmatic politics, and on that question I respectfully, but forcefully, disagree with Krugman.
The idea that it’s a bad idea to say what you believe if you can’t accomplish it is based on a metaphor of “political capital”. In this view, politics is like going to the store with a certain amount of money in your pocket; if you spend too much on health care, you won’t have any left over for dealing with other priorities like climate change or inequality or whatever.
And yes, that’s the traditional way of doing politics. You get to Washington and you have the intrinsic power of your office, and you start trading bits of that power, making deals to get what you want. For that kind of politician, power is indeed a non-renewable resource, or at least, renewable only through wise investment in successful efforts.
But I, and many of those of us who support Bernie Sanders, believe that that kind of politics is too timid; that what America needs is a progressive populist who knows that when you have a movement at your back, courage should be spent generously, not stingily hoarded. In a people-powered political revolution like the one Sanders calls for, trying and failing doesn’t make you weaker for the next battle, it makes you stronger.
After all, this is an insight that, wrong as they are in other ways, the Republicans understand intuitively. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are driven by narcissism where Sanders is driven by values; but all three of them know that apologizing for what you believe and asking for half-measures is not the way to win.
It’s not that Sanders isn’t capable of compromise. He’s the “Amendment King” of the Senate; when the sausage is being made, he’ll do what it takes to get it finished. But asking for half a loaf to start out with simply isn’t the way to get the best compromise.
So yes, Krugman is right; Clinton would do better at stingily husbanding her political capital. But Sanders isn’t playing that game; he’s looking for a political revolution, where we take our country back from the 0.1%. If that sounds good to you, then he deserves your vote.