Democratic Primaries

Indeed, everytime Bernie started pushing single payer, the Republicans were going to ride the wave and introduce another bill to repeal the ACA. There is no reason why Bernie could push for improvements to the ACA so that it could evolve toward single payer. In South Korea, their health system was not invented overnight, but took over a decade to get to where it was at. However, Bernie's calculus is that he does not want to improve it, because this will somehow take the edge off of his revolution, so it is all or nothing.

This is why I think that even if Bernie won the Presidency, we would get far less than under Biden. Bernie has not shown he can push through major pieces of legislation. Plus, to the extent that he now compromises, he will look like a liar, because he has set the bar so high. Indeed, it almost seems that he is setting himself up for failure, just he can blame the "establishment" when his ideas fail to see the light of day.

It goes back to Lyndon Johnson versus George McGovern. LBJ was hardly a revolutionary, but he knew how to pass legislation, which is why JFK added him to the ticket over the objections of the left. Yet, it is LBJ that is now considered the gold standard for passing progressive legislation. George McGovern? He just ended up alienating himself from the Democratic party, and he ended up getting destroyed by Richard Nixon.