*sigh* okay, since everybody is tweeting the usual Worst Leftists into my feed, let's talk about this a bit https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1287886941627846656

there's a general assumption on the left that single-payer healthcare (which I support and which I think the USA should adopt) is overwhelmingly popular, usually by taking one element from a poll out of context, for example this one https://twitter.com/wideofthepost/status/1287938340306726912

and if you only look at that number, my word, why aren't the Democrats rushing to support M4A? It has 78 percent support within the party and 57 percent support generally!

But:

Kaiser did a lot more polling than just "do you like M4A yes/no circle one." I've got the comprehensive findings here in front of me.

First off, the 57 percent figure is both the "strongly favor" and the "somewhat favor" numbers; the "strong" is only 32 percent. (For Democrats, it's 49 percent.) So support for M4A as a base concept is a little softer than its proponents suggest.

Secondly, "Medicare for all" was smart branding because if you call it that 63% of people think it sounds good, versus 49 percent thinking "single-payer health insurance system" sounds good.

(I just wanted to point out what an actual messaging victory looks like.)

The problem with M4A is that as you probably know, in order for it to, like, work it has to effectively replace the private insurance system. For you and me, this is fine, we think the private system is bad garbage. But you and me ain't the majority of voters.

If you ask voters "would you oppose M4A if it meant getting rid of private health insurance" 58 percent say yes. If you ask voters "would you oppose M4A if it means higher taxes" 60 percent say yes.

If you want to push Bernie Sanders' preferred argument, which is "it's cheaper for you even with higher taxes because it decreases your overall costs" - which is true! - then 48% of people oppose it. Versus *47% supporting.*

That is the best and most forceful argument any politician has made in favor of M4A and it only manages *nearly a tie.*

And we're not done with the bad news about this yet!

Among M4A supporters - people who characterized themselves in the poll as people who supported M4A - SIXTY-SEVEN PERCENT think M4A means "we would be able to keep our current health insurance." Only 24 percent believe they'd lose their current insurance. (Which they would.)

That's the significant majority of M4A supporters believing something about the policy support which is flatly wrong. And as I've just pointed out, if you communicate clearly to them their mistake, you probably lose a lot of their support on the issue!

Now, let's turn to the public option, which KFF also polled about - and which, to be clear, I think is a hodgepodge workaround that will be dramatically less effective than M4A.

The public option has two major components: extending Medicare eligibility to younger Americans, and expanding Medicaid so people who don't get insurance through work can get insurance that way.

Medicare expansion polls at 77 percent support, with 85 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents and even 69 percent of Republicans supporting it. Medicaid expansion has 75 percent support, with 85/75/64 percent splits.

Bluntly, these are generally popular positions with the electorate. And we knew this, because we just saw a large referendum on M4A as an issue in the Democratic primary and the M4A-supporting candidates (Sanders and Warren) only got a collective majority in a handful of states.

The Democratic electorate - and the larger American electorate - is still leery of M4A. They like the general idea of everybody having healthcare even if they can't afford it: they're for that! But, like most people everywhere, they're worried about the devil they don't know.

KFF polls aren't the only ones that show this effect, by the way. It's pretty well-established at this point: Americans love M4A, unless you ask them if they're really really willing to give up their current health insurance plan in favour of it, at which point they get timid.

But there's a certain type of leftist who only looks at the topmost, simplest data and then says "well it's OBVIOUS we'd win if we just did THIS" despite the fact that somebody with a lot of funding and support just did This and still lost.

And as I've said before: this is pretty much exactly the same trajectory that South Korea took to get to socialized healthcare. It took them about fourteen years and they didn't have to deal with a Donald Trump en route.

All of that said, I'm not sure why the DNC didn't vote to support legalizing marijuana, because that genuinely *is* popular with no caveats top-to-bottom, so don't take me to say the Democrats are some fantastic party because they're not super-great.