If you think that Obamacare is a great improvement in public policy — that it is making America a better place — and that there was no more politically attractive way of achieving its objectives, then of course it was worth doing at some political cost. I’ll give that to Senator Schumer’s critics in the Democratic party.

But I think that there were several other courses of action open to the Democrats in 2009–10 that would have served both their political and policy objectives better than what they did. The standard liberal response to the critique that Democrats should have done more on the economy is that the only worthwhile initiative, more fiscal stimulus, would be DOA in Congress. But that just seems to me evidence of a failure of imagination. They could have worked on raising the long-term growth rate: making a deal on business taxation, reforming patents, and so forth. They could also have nominated and confirmed doves (or situational doves) to the Federal Reserve, and urged the Fed to commit to bringing spending, or the price level, back to its pre-crisis trendline. None of that would have yielded the direct benefits to the middle class that Schumer has in mind, but they would have shown that Democrats had their eyes on the ball.

Democrats had multiple paths open on health care too. They could, for example, have just pushed a straight expansion of Medicaid, medical-malpractice reform, and some Medicare cost savings. I would have opposed that package, but they would have probably gotten a lot more bipartisan support than, and roughly as much coverage expansion as, they ended up getting.