Democratic presidential hopeful Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks during the fourth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by The New York Times and CNN at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio on October 15, 2019. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

News Items assembly begins at around 2:30 am weekday mornings, so I don't watch prime time television, as a rule. My Google robots are hard at work however, gathering the latest news and video clips. They did a nice job capturing the "highlights" of Tuesday's Democratic candidates debate. I then read the next morning's coverage/analysis and then, finally, the transcript of the debate itself. How anyone came away with the idea that Elizabeth Warren "won" the debate is beyond me. Yes, she was the focus of the others' attacks. Yes, she got the most speaking time. And yes, she's good at getting her points across (and insisting that she be allowed to finish her answers). But she did not "win" the debate. The debate wounded her and revealed her vulnerability on the issue of Medicare For All. That vulnerability is all-but-perfectly captured here. Dodging the issue of how Medicare For All can realistically be financed isn't tenable, even in the short-term. The longer she dodges the question, the more damage her candidacy sustains.

Compounding the "artful dodger" problem was (and is) a surprising defect of wonkdom. Because she is very smart (whether you agree with her or not, she is very smart), we expect her to be smart about most everything. And she markets brain power and thoughtfulness as a feature of her campaign (she has "a plan for that" is code for "she knows what she's talking about"). On the subject of Medicare For All, however, she appeared not to have done her homework, as Megan McArdle pointed out to devastating effect in this morning's Washington Post. To paraphrase McArdle, it turns out Warren is not a health care wonk, "she just plays one on TV." Playing expert on TV would be fine if Warren had been skating her way through some gotcha question about the Export-Import Bank. But she wasn't doing that. She was talking about a staggering and unsustainable expansion of Federal spending. Here's The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein: The Urban Institute, a center-left think tank highly respected among Democrats, is projecting that a plan similar to what Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders are pushing would require $34 trillion in additional federal spending over its first decade in operation. That's more than the federal government's total cost over the coming decade for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office projections. This is not an issue that can be "finessed," although the Warren campaign brain trust is doubtless trying to think of a way to do just that. There is no way.



Which means that Warren, sooner rather than later, is going to have to walk back her support for Medicare For All or propose a massive middle class tax increase to pay for it. Bernie Sanders has been honest about the need for such a tax increase and argues that it will be offset by reduced health care costs (over time). Warren is trying to have it both ways. That gives Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar the opportunity to damage her "brand" as policy wonk and, perhaps more important, as a "truth-teller." There are two brackets in the Democratic presidential nomination campaign. The "activist" or ideological bracket, once owned by Bernie Sanders, is now more Warren than not. You don't have to read the polls to see the shift. It's evident from the crowds Warren attracts around the country. She's the new standard-bearer for the party's formidable left wing. The other bracket is comprised of candidates who are more "moderate" and advertise their "electability." The argument these candidates make is simple: "Beat Donald Trump first and we'll figure out the rest later." As the president's behavior grows more erratic, the power of this proposition strengthens.