Matt Yglesias has chosen, in healthcare,a strange example to advance his case for how left-wing Clinton's policy would have been if not for Republican resistance. True, as Matt observes, he made some significant tactical blunders on the issue, but I'd say Theda Skocpol (no raging socialist she) was right to argue that the most profound and damaging of these was that he proposed a relatively moderate reform thinking it would appease his opponents on the right and in so doing only managed to alienate his allies on the left while earning himself no olive branch from the HMOs and confusing everybody in between with a complicated, uninspiring plan.