Elizabeth Warren is dynamic and brilliant. She’s running a crisp presidential campaign, including the clever (and surely exhausting) populist tactic of posing for selfies with any rally attendee who wants one.
That makes it puzzling that Warren has lashed herself to an impossibly expensive leftist agenda that would require $4.2 trillion in new federal spending per year, if enacted. The biggest chunk of that would be Medicare for all, the government health care program that would eliminate private insurance and cost around $3.2 trillion per year, nearly doubling federal outlays.
Voters impressed by Warren’s energy and intellect now seem to be having second thoughts about her. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows the portion of Democratic voters saying Warren is their first choice cratered from October to November. In October, 28% of Democratic voters said Warren was their first choice, putting her in first place. In the November poll, only 14% chose Warren, putting her in third place behind Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
Another new poll, from CNN, also shows Biden with 28% of the vote, followed by Bernie Sanders with 17%, Warren with 14% and Buttigieg with 11%. While the gap between Biden and Warren is the same in both polls, the month to month change isn’t nearly as pronounced in the CNN poll, where Warren has consistently trailed Biden.
National polls don’t tell the whole story, since a strong showing in early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire can give a candidate momentum that raises their standing elsewhere. Warren is doing considerably better in Iowa, where a variety of polls show that she and Buttigieg are the front-runners, with Biden and Sanders jockeying for the next two spots.
Still, Warren has struggled to win over voters skeptical of the disruption Medicare for all would cause. Among Democrats, there’s more support for an optional Medicare-buy-in plan that would leave private insurance alone than there is for abolishing private insurance and forcing everyone into a government plan. Medicare for all fares even worse beyond Democratic voters. Polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report finds that 62% of all voters in four key swing states say Medicare for all is a “bad idea,” with just 36% saying it’s a “good idea.”
Collossal disruption
If Warren were the Democratic nominee for president, her Republican opponent—presumably, President Trump—would undoubtedly characterize her health care plan as “socialized medicine” and claim she wants to take away people’s health care. That’s not pure propaganda. Health care experts think Medicare for all would lead to a shortage of doctors and other caregivers. It would reduce or eliminate private health care spending, but still require trillions in new taxes. It could also eliminate 1.8 million health care jobs.