Democrats passed a substantial health care bill in 2008. In 2010, Democrats got massacred. The bill didn't even really do all that much. It was a "big f**ing d

Democrats passed a substantial health care bill in 2008. In 2010, Democrats got massacred. The bill didn't even really do all that much. It was a "big f**ing deal" because it got done at all. And they paid for getting something done. People can complain about health care all they want, but they don't agree on what should be done. They certainly can't be bothered to pay attention to esoteric and marginal improvements. Nobody is going to re-elect Biden to try to reduce the price of Imbruvica. They might as well talk about health care, but not because it's an exciting development that will attract voters. They're going to present themselves as the dull, mature party who cares about boring things like "not dying of easily preventable diseases" and "actually keeping the government open". Then they can hope that people would prefer that to government by the party who says that the government is the enemy and should be destroyed. It's a coin toss. Yglesias's suggestion isn't going to weight that coin.