Support for single-payer health care in the United States, an idea historically championed by the likes of Scandinavian ex-pats, stoned college kids, and little-known Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, has suddenly transformed into the Democratic Party's most fashionable policy position that doesn't involve voting to impeach Donald Trump sometime in the next ten minutes. Over the past few weeks, longtime Senate fixtures and relative Washington newcomers alike have practically fallen over each other in an effort to announce their support for Sanders' "Medicare for All" bill: Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Al Franken, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, among many others. Just a few years after Sanders scored exactly zero co-sponsors when he rolled out a similar proposal, D.C.'s nerdiest bandwagon is suddenly very crowded.

Before you celebrate this development by running outside and finding clever new ways to get hurt, keep in mind that the bill's odds of passing the Republican-controlled House and Senate and earning President Trump's signature are too small to be measured using even the most carefully calibrated scientific instruments. But the willingness of high-profile legislators to line up behind what was once seen as a fringe position is a reasonably encouraging signal that at least some Democrats have heard the complaints that their party has grown equal parts directionless and spineless, and are trying to do something about it. As Vox's Matt Yglesias argues, even if the details of a single-player plan still require extensive development and debate, it is at least a clear, coherent vision about the direction—left—in which the party's leaders intend to take it.

In news that may shock you, stumping for single-payer is also a savvy career move for the individuals doing so. (Especially for those with loftier political aspirations in Washington in, say, three years.) A common—and fair—criticism of Democratic candidates has been that in their efforts to represent the party of reasonable adults, they too often negotiate with themselves, offering neatly-packaged consensus proposals to voters that, when their GOP counterparts fail to do the same, necessarily forces those same Democrats to tack to the right when wooing voters on the campaign trail.

But since Donald Trump paid no electoral penalty for his refusal to compromise, many Democratic voters are no longer quite as shy about demanding what they really want from prospective leaders, as opposed to what they think those leaders could get after several months of backroom dealmaking on the Hill. Whether or not you think it's a fair analysis, one lesson politicians have taken away from Hillary Clinton's loss is that voters want candidates who are unapologetically aspirational. Coming in with a high opening bid on the subject will be valuable debate fodder for any candidate looking to position themselves as the 2020 Bernie Sanders, a far left-option operating juuuuust far enough inside the Democratic Party's structure in order to be taken seriously by its constituents. (One of whom may very well end up being Sanders himself.)

The Affordable Care Act is great, and fighting like hell to save it was a much better alternative than listening to Paul Ryan and whatever jumble of harebrained Heritage Foundation white papers he kept trying to pass off as a health care "reform" bill. But any scheme that leaves tens of millions of people without coverage still isn't a complete or permanent solution to the country's patchwork system of health care. Democrats with political dreams bigger than the office in which they currently sit are correct to think about the next iteration of solutions to this problem, and their decision to stake out an aggressively progressive position on the subject is, at the very least, a promising start.

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