Warren would be my fist choice.

last month even when it had bipartisan support. Richard Neal, a Democrat, put it “on hold.” He also happened to take a $29k donation from Blackstone, which owns a firm that stood to take a hit from the measure.

Democrats are divided on health care not least because they take a lot of money from health care interests and that holds true at the candidate level as well. Both Biden and Buttigieg are raising money with the help of higher ups at BCBS and Blackstone, eg. What I think Merkley is saying is that hair splitting over this or that plan at the candidate level is a waste of time because none of them stand a chance in hell of making it through Congress as is, and not just because of Republican opposition. It wasn’t Republicans who killed the public option ten years ago.

In addition to squishy Dems, you have nihilist Republicans and, most important, the health care lobby itself, which equates the public option with M4A and is already fighting against it just as hard. My point is choosing a candidate (or not) based on their health care plan is misguided. Nothing meaningful will happen until our Party unites against the for-profit system and doesn’t allow itself to be picked about by the health care lobby which is presently the case. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t evaluate candidates’ plans. It does mean, to Merkley’s point, that we shouldn’t spend the first half hour of every debate on them.