nbc news correspondents. welcome all. i want to pick out two issues first because they were the two issues that i thought, well, one, we heard a lot there, one is health care. and the reason i want to start with health care, heidi, is because i actually think it actually health care in those debates helped you understand where on the spectrum of the democratic party candidate x lied, right? like, health care, you basically want to keep obamacare, expand to public option or you take it and hope it becomes universal. you could just see the degree. so in some ways it s the best issue to use to sort of sift the candidates. it s where you re going to sift the candidates. but it was also notable that all of the top tier candidates view this trajectory of something that s ultimately going to end with single payer. even biden in some ways whether you have a bridge or not, that is where we end up.
so the question is really the transition in how we get there. and if this is going to be a debate about issues, then it s going to be hard i think still for voters to really care about those nuanced differences of how you actually get there versus the principle of just single payer. and this was a breakout moment, right? for example, michael bennet who took a stand and said this is not you know, we have to have, we have to preserve the private market. this is something that once we get out of the primaries, i bet you anything, mark my words, we are going to see some of these candidates. walk it back a little bit? walk it back a little bit. there has got to be a longer bridge. nobody even michael bennet s not quite saying this. let s finish implementing obamacare? obamacare has not been implemented. sometimes i just medicaid has not been expanded in all 50 states. we don t know whether obamacare
is already the bridge. and, look, look at what s been happening on the house, nancy pelosi and house democrats have introduced a number of bills to really, you know, improve obamacare and to strengthen it. and she s really tried to avoid the fight over medicare for all because of the way it pulls apart the party. i think, yes, health care is a great issue for democrats. it s also a great attack issue for donald trump, in part, because of the reasons you are talking about. it s really difficult to explain how do you kick 180 million people off their private insurance. which is what heidi s point, they re not going to do it. when you have donald trump who uses the simplistic argument as a battering ram and he will just call it socialism over and over again. there is one part from the debate that i think we are going to see in the trump ads because it allows him it take health care, which is a bad issue for him, and link it to immigration. let me play that excerpt. this is a sho
people can see. raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants? [ cheers and applause ] i believe with a show of hands you did not raise your hand. did you raise your hand? no, i did. sorry. so you said that they would be covered under your plan. yes. which is different than obamacare. can you explain that change? yes. you can not let, as the mayor said, you can not let people no matter what their status, where they came from, go uncovered. it s just got to be taken care of, period. wow. and what s funny is, by god, we had a whole debate. you lie, barack obama went to the of congress to say obamacare didn t do that, but, wow, has the thing shifted in the democratic primary. republicans are so giddy over this, yes. the president has commented on