Now they tell us

Premature anti-fascists, via The Typescript.

Not sorry to see they're aware of the magic wand problem, but kind of annoyed that they let Elizabeth Warren take all the heat for acknowledging it first, then start admitting it weeks later.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) February 18, 2020

In fact downright pissed off, as I start to think about it, given that the heat was coming primarily from them, and has gone on for the whole three months since 15 November, when Warren finally explained, after tons of pressure to which the Sanders camp was never subjected, that her method for achieving Medicare For All was going to take some time to implement,

beginning with passing a bill at the start of her presidency that would create a new government health plan that would cover children and people with lower incomes for free, while allowing others to join the plan if they choose. It’s a particularly expansive version of a public option.

Only later, in her third year in the White House, does Warren say she would pursue Medicare-for-all legislation that would actually prohibit private health insurance, as would be required for the single-payer program that she says she, like Bernie Sanders, wants.

Which I loved, of course, as evidence that she really did have a plan for that, that she meant to achieve it, not just represent it, like a totem animal, as a branding element, the way the other guys did, with Sanders's preposterous assertion that all it would take to pass the bill would be staging rallies in Kentucky, and the total absence of ideas on how the nation would transition into the new system. Not only did Warren chart a timetable for getting to the single-payer ideal, she had staged it in such a way as to ensure that even if she failed at any given point, the nation would still be better off in terms of healthcare accessibility than it had been at the time of her inauguration.

But not everybody loved it. Like Krystal Ball, writing for The Hill:

Well, now that she's already taken the hit in the polls from the right, I guess Warren decided she really wants to get hit from the left too because she's just released a Medicare for All transition plan which essentially co-opts Mayor Pete's medicare for those who want it positioning.

or Luke Thibault at Jacobin

Whatever her intentions, Elizabeth Warren’s reversal from immediately pushing for Medicare for All to first passing a public option as part of a longer-term phase-in will sideline our movement — and fail to move us closer to achieving either program.

and worse on Twitter, where she's been called a class traitor, a snake, even (shudder) a Neoliberal. And that's where here poll numbers began to slide, right away:

For months, Warren has been running on a populist message of fighting Washington corruption and Wall Street greed. But her promise to expand government health insurance coverage without raising middle-class taxes is what has drawn the most attacks from rivals who say it is unrealistic and from some voters concerned it is too extreme.

Warren’s momentum has stalled in the month since she announced how she would finance and implement the system, a policy previously tied most closely to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also in the race.

Now, starting with my dear Alexandria Ocasio-Córtez, members of the Sanders camp are starting to rethink that a bit:

AOC on likelihood of M4A getting passed: “The worst-case scenario? We compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option. Is that a nightmare? I don’t think so,” she said. (H/t @eschor) https://t.co/nbI4TBkgJI

— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) February 13, 2020

Yes, Alexandria, it wouldn't be a nightmare. That's what I've been trying to tell you. And even, if he's interested, the unspeakable Jeff Weaver.

All, of course, without mentioning that Warren broke that path for them; just throwing it out there, with no more plans than they had in the first place, after she got the punishment. It's like the premature anti-fascists of 1937; Warren was right too soon, and as a result she might be out of the contest, while those who waited to be right for a discreet period still have a chance.