Here's why (https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/12/the-case-for-forcing-a-floor-vote-on-medicare-for-all).
Importantly, even a failing floor vote would force Democrats to own their opposition to a life-saving, popular policy, and it would expose those Democratic House members who are thought to have cosponsored Medicare for All to burnish their progressive bonafides without ever intending to vote for the bill. For example, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker cosponsored the Senate version of the bill but reversed their positions during their presidential campaigns. Forcing a vote on H.R. 1384 would pressure House Democrats to either support the bill or defend their “no” votes as single-payer’s popularity spikes. (Recall how her Iraq war vote dogged Hillary Clinton in both 2016 and 2008, or how both Biden and Bernie Sanders’s votes for the 1994 Crime Bill continue to follow them.) “If [Jayapal’s bill] loses, then we know who is on our side and who is not,” Dore has argued. “Then we can put a marker down.”
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