Less than four years ago, liberals and socialists were locked in a bitter feud over the health care plans advanced by Democratic primary candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. America is a country where anything that happened more than a week ago is considered ancient history, so I know that even a lot of socialists will think it gauche and unserious to remember that this happened, or to suggest that we could still have anything to learn from it.

Still, a major question in that debate revolved around how the fight for those plans would be going right now if Sanders or Warren were elected. Recall that while Sanders insisted on passing the entire program in a single bill, Warren decided that it would be clever to split her agenda in two. First she would begin pass a public option, “and then follow up with legislation to end existing employer plans by her third year in office, once the new system has a foothold.”