No one could credit Kamala Harris as a progressive champion when her desire to be identified as such waxed and waned during the campaign.

Yet all of them stood with Bernie and endorsed his version of “Medicare for All,” the Vermont socialist’s signature proposal that would represent the most intrusive expansion of government in American history.

The plan would require massive taxes, entail huge cuts in payments to doctors and hospitals, forbid private insurance, and impose a more restrictive and generous government-run health care system on the U.S. than exists in European social democracies. It’s not something you endorse lightly, but Booker, et al., did. They all wobbled, hedged their bets or flip-flopped, demonstrating, if there were any doubt, their insincerity on a key issue with deep philosophical implications.

Warren has suffered from the same disease. She’s lasted much longer than the others, and is still in the hunt in Iowa. She also has gone further down the Sanders path. She unequivocally stated, “I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All” in one of the early Democratic debates. Then, she got tangled up on the question of financing because the part of her brain worried about the general election didn’t want to admit she’d have to raise taxes on the middle class. This led to an agonizing climbdown. She settled on the implausible compromise position that she’d initially pursue incremental health care policies until passing Medicare for All in the third year of her presidency, when presidents are not usually at a high ebb of their legislative power.

It’s no accident that the candidate thriving in the Bernie lane is the only one who is still a full-throated proponent of Medicare for All, namely Bernie himself.

Warren’s struggles with Medicare for All played against a backdrop of other authenticity issues, most famously her purported Native American heritage. Bernie has no such issues, in fact the opposite.