Elizabeth Warren lacks the stones to dominate the left lane of the Democratic presidential primaries. We know this because tonight, at the Detroit debate, she equivocated on whether her “Medicare for all” plan would raise taxes on the middle class. At least Bernie Sanders, the original socialist of the Senate, was willing to admit it.

The middle class would pay “less out of pocket,” Warren asserted, contradicting every financial evaluation of a plan that would overturn the employer-sponsored, private health insurance plans of 150 million Americans and replace it with a Medicare package featuring benefits far more generous than the public system in its existing form.