It’s Not Cowardly to Worry About Medicare for All
Warren and Sanders have strong principles. Guess what? Pragmatic Democrats do, too.
They aren’t the only Democrats who are taking bold stands.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
At the Democratic debate this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren won loud applause, and helped define the Democratic presidential race, when she exclaimed, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”
It was a powerful moment. But it fits with a strategy, now prominent on the left, of characterizing reform-minded pragmatism as a form of cowardice, a capitulation to the right, a demonstration of spinelessness, a Republican talking point or a failure of nerve or character, rather than what it usually is: a matter of principle.