The centrists are finally talking about Medicare for All. Since they can’t deny the moral imperative of single payer, they’ve become obsessed with attacking its “political viability.” Yet, detached from the work of political persuasion, it seems these opinion-generators know little about how regular people actually think about Medicare for All.

Hillary Clinton this week dismissed single payer as being “the right goal” but politically impossible. J.P. Green of the Democratic Strategist opined that “Medicare for All in the Sanders-Warren sense is just not viable politically.” Ron Brownstein fretted in the Atlantic last month about the political challenge of a reform with such an “eye-popping” price tag, and the “anxieties” of Democratic health care experts on whether Warren’s plan (people like this avoid mentioning Bernie at all) could fly in the general election. David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote a couple weeks ago of Warren’s plan, “The No. 1 reason to question her version of Medicare for All — in which private health insurance would be eliminated — is its political viability.” How will she “overcome people’s resistance to giving up their health insurance for a larger new program that yes, would require a tax increase”? Leonhardt could not imagine.

In their world, Medicare for All is on everyone’s mind, but is impossible. Turning away from the pundits, with their cramped political imaginations and scant experience of humans, offers a different view.