Ed Kilgore: Oh God, I don’t believe they’re asking Warren if she’ll raise taxes to pay for Medicare for All again!
Benjamin Hart: I think it’s fair — she never answers it!
Sarah Jones: She has though!
Ben: Not really. Just answer it! She replies to the question by changing the subject.
Ezekiel Kweku: She’s going to give this exact same answer every time.
Ed: I think she keeps saying “taxes will go up, but costs will go down more” without serving up a sound bite.
Ezekiel: I just feel like we get where the candidates stand on this issue.
Ben: I think Buttigieg calling her out on her waffling is an effective line of attack.
Ezekiel: I don’t see anything wrong with her answer, tbh.
Ed: Pete’s attack was telegraphed by his new ad, which is why he was really lucky they asked the same damn question for the fifth time.
Jeb Reed: They’ll keep asking it! As they should.
Sarah Jones: It shouldn’t be that predictable.
Eric: Guess Warren is not pivoting to “Medicare for All Who Want It” in the general.
Ed: She’s not going to say her plan will raise taxes. Media and Republicans are going to go nuts over this.
Ben: With the usual caveat that this stuff ends up not mattering much, I don’t think this is good for Warren.
Margaret Hartmann: Bernie’s answer was way clearer.
Jeb: Yeah, i’m not sure refusing to say the word taxes really helps at a certain point.
Ezekiel:My political geiger counter is not going off.
Sarah: I think she’s been fine, but Bernie has the benefit of years of consistency on this subject.
Jeb: I still don’t get why she’s so risk averse on the word “taxes,” but not risk averse on saying she’ll ban private insurance.
Jon: It’s extremely unpopular to raise taxes on the middle class!
Ed: Klobuchar does Warren a favor by changing the subject.
Ben: Klobuchar is doing well, and she’s right that this endless debate over M4A/taxes misses many of the points.
Adam: I guess all of the time spent on this means Warren really is the front-runner.
Josh: The only reason there is this tiresome effort over and over to get Warren to answer this question is that she consistently refuses to answer it.
Ben: Precisely.
Ezekiel: Okay, but I don’t care. It’s not worth it.
Ezekiel: Who is it about?
Ed: She actually does answer it implicitly, but I agree she shouldn’t do this.
Ben: It’s about Josh.
Josh: I think we can infer from the fact that she is so insistent on not answering the question that a lot of people would be interested in the answer. If people didn’t care she’d answer the question so reporters would stop bothering her about it.
Ezekiel: I don’t think we can. The cost to her not answering the question is not that high.
Josh: We know exactly what Warren is doing: She wants to compete with Bernie for leftist voters who care about Medicare for All without taking any responsibility for the unpopular things she would have to do to get it implemented. It is frankly dishonest. Although the main direction the dishonesty goes is that she knows the financing is too unpopular to get done, yet she is pretending she will implement single-payer.
She’s not lying to me. She’s lying to socialists. Whereas Bernie forthrightly intends to make a forthright run at single-payer (which he will lose).
Eric: The thing is, she’s also embraced a ton of really unpopular stuff forthrightly. Decriminalizing border enforcement, reparations, a fracking ban — all more unpopular than M4A when taxes are mentioned, if I’m not mistaken.
Sarah: Fracking ban is way more unpopular.
Ezekiel: There’s not going to be a Medicare for All bill on her desk to sign in the first place.
Ben: Yes, the fact that there’s a 0.0% chance of this happening does take something away from the conversation.
