One of the frustrating things about the centrist response to single-payer proposals is that they cannot seem to determine in their own minds whether a particular objection is political or technical. Indeed, often objections will start off as technical and then, when pushed back against, quickly morph into a political argument.

It’s fine, of course, to make political arguments. It’s also fine to make both technical and political arguments. But what is not fine is to conflate the two.

Catherine Rampell’s latest post is a masterpiece of this kind of conflation. This is especially true because she borrows from the argumentative themes of technical impossibility (“facts, evidence, and experts”) in order to make arguments that are almost entirely about her own personal opinions about how voters will behave.