Isn’t it great to be living in the United States of America? A country where millions forgo vital medical care because they can’t afford it, where cancer is a leading cause of bankruptcy, and where millions have lost their jobs because of a deadly pandemic and hence lost their employer health insurance.

Medicare for All is not just a vital moral imperative, it makes political sense. A clear majority of the public supports it, including a surprising number of ordinary working-class people who identify as Republicans. It’s good politics as well as good policy, and it’s very good that Bernie Sanders and left-wing representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have brought it into the center of the debate about health care policy.

But if we’re going to win this fight, we need to start from an understanding of how the Democratic and Republican establishments continue to stand in the way of such a basic reform and what it would take to overcome that resistance. We need to take Medicare for All from a popular idea that never actually goes anywhere to something that has at least a fighting chance of success. That’s why the debate that’s recently broken out on comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore’s idea about how congressional Berniecrats could advance the proposal matters on a level much more important than different media personalities clashing on YouTube and Twitter.