They were ridiculed as absurd when Bernie Sanders presented them. Hilary Clinton’s book “What Happened” recounts conversations that liken the idea of health care to giving all Americans a free pony. That’s less than 18 months ago. Now pretty nearly everyone who is thought of as a serious contender for 2020 has backed the idea in principle. The “far left” (which, yeah, in any other developed nation would be called “centrists”) are the ones to thank for that.
Clearly what the Democrats have been doing has been a dismal failure politically. Thinking they could do whatever they wanted and progressives would always have to vote for them to stop the Republicans alienated those progressives. Continuing to double down on their “We’re the only choice” platform and blaming the voters for being too ideologically pure when it doesn’t work seems like a really bad plan to me.
