House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to embrace Medicare for All after he rejected the DNC resolution to pass legislation abolishing ICE.
Jeffries gave a lengthy interview on NBC's Meet the Press where he rejected many of the actions that the base of the Democratic Party believes in.
Host Kristen Welker pressed him to make a definitive statement about his support for Medicare for All.
"Do you personally support Medicare for All?" she asked.
It was clear Jeffries did not want to respond to that question directly so he took time to correctly attack Republicans for their destructive actions on healthcare.
"Just to be very clear, though, as a Democratic leader in the House, would you vote for or against Medicare for All?" Welker pressed.
"I think, as you've indicated in your question to me, it's not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support," Jeffries said.
Jeffries supported Medicare For All in 2017 to 2019, but began changing his positions.
Instead of criticizing it, he should adopt Paul Krugman's suggested approach:
That said, a rapid transition to Medicare for All looks unlikely. Bear in mind that such a transition would require higher taxes, so that it would be necessary to persuade people that these taxes would be more than offset by lower premiums. And this would be a hard sell.
But there is an alternative: A public option, better described as Medicare Buy-In. Allow individuals, and possibly more important, employers, to sign up for Medicare benefits, paying actuarially fair premiums to Medicare reflecting the health status of their workers. There’s no obvious reason a public option would be any harder to implement than payments to the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurers, which are also supposed to be actuarially fair.
And if a Medicare Buy-In option were available, many people and many employers would surely take it. It would be a safe choice, with lower administrative and marketing costs than private insurance.
Here's some advice for Jeffries: Stop threading the fucking needle. Don't attack the DSA like you did throughout the interview. Instead of embracing them as part of the Democratic Party. You were so quick to point out the positions you disagreed with, but failed to acknowledge what Democrats and the DSA agree on. They agree on much more than your complaints.
Jeffries is making the mistake of worrying about Republicans who don't like Trump instead of shoring up his base. And in the process, he's unnecessarily alienating voters who vote solidly Democratic.
That's a failure of leadership. If he can't lead, then Dems need to find someone who will.
