Warren claims her tax hikes aren’t going to cost the middle-class anything, but some of her fellow Democrats worry it could cost the party seats in Congress. Politico reports that moderate Dems are dreading having to explain $20 trillion in new taxes to voters:

The most-vulnerable Democrat in Colorado’s state House, Bri Buentello, is dreading door-knocking in her rural district now that Elizabeth Warren dropped her massive “Medicare for All” plan into the presidential arena.

“This is going to cause down-ballot damage in swing districts and states if she’s the nominee,” Buentello says, describing how her Pueblo-area constituents — who voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 — were already echoing criticisms about a giant, one-size-fits-all big government run plan that cancels private health insurance and raises taxes.

Allahpundit explored some of this same territory yesterday when Nancy Pelosi announced she was not a big fan of M4A. That’s not too surprising really because she’s usually a bit shrewder than most of the socialists in her party. There’s also a geographic problem with M4A. It’s most popular in places where Democrats are already guaranteed to win and least popular in places they need to compete:

“The fundamental challenge Senator Warren has in selling her plans across the country is that Medicare for All, while popular in largely urban coastal areas, does not share the same appeal in the middle of the country, particularly in the areas where people largely have health insurance and are mostly satisfied,” said Bill Burton, a former spokesman for President Obama’s campaign and the founder of a super PAC that supported his reelection, who also briefly worked for billionaire Howard Schultz’s brief 2020 presidential campaign.

“When you look at the counties that President Obama and President Trump won, you see rates of health insurance in the 90-95% range, so she’s potentially solving a problem that many of these voters may not share these views on,” Burton said.

Democrats have bought into the positive polling for M4A without acknowledging that most of these polls focus on the benefits without saying anything about the costs and the disruption. Here’s how the Kaiser Family Foundation put it last month:

Overall, a majority of Democrats and about half of independents favor a national Medicare-for-all plan while most Republicans oppose…

Yet, it is unclear how much staying power this support has once people become aware of the details of any plan or hear arguments on either side. Current KFF polling finds that Americans know little about how the leading Medicare-for-all proposals would reshape the way all Americans get and pay for health care, and public support for Medicare-for-all shifts significantly when people hear arguments about potential tax increases or delays in medical tests and treatment. KFF polling also shows many people falsely assume they would be able to keep their current health insurance under a single-payer plan, suggesting another potential area for decreased support especially since most supporters (67 percent) of such a proposal think they would be able to keep their current health insurance coverage.

Simply put, Warren’s plan boils down to ‘If you like your plan, too bad.’ Once people focus on the disruption and the cost, support will drop. On top of that, her $20 trillion tax increase probably isn’t big enough to pay for M4A. All conservatives have to do is to point out that, as expensive as it is, M4A is likely to wind up costing much more than predicted while also wiping out millions of jobs.

There will still be plenty of far-left progressives in blue cities who think it sounds great, but Warren’s plan is likely to be a disaster for Democrats in purple districts.