“[This is] the most ambitious and progressive platform our party has ever seen” – Maya Harris, Clinton policy adviser.
- Minimum wage: Rejected the Sanders proposal to actually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Clinton members of the committee also rejected indexing any minimum wage to inflation.
- Jobs: Rejected to state what it means to restore infrastructure and revitalize decaying communities. No mention of how much (percentage of GDP) should be spent on projects.
- Education: Rejected college education for all who qualify. Rejected eliminating (or just mitigating) student debt.
- Death Penalty: First time in the Democratic Party’s history that it has called for abolishing the death penalty.
- Trade: Rejected renegotiating bad trade deals like NAFTA and TPP.
- Earned Income Tax Credit: Rejects expanding the credit, only expanding the feel-good idea.
- Wall Street Reform: Rejected breaking too-big-to-fail institutions that threaten economic stability, a break-up the Obama administration made sure didn’t happen. Rejected calls to replace Glass-Steagall Act to expand regulatory controls like the ones the party also refused to adopt in 2009.
- Multi-millionaire Surtax: Refused to address wealth disparity in any form. No specifics on whether millionaires can no longer pay a lower [tax] rate than their secretaries.
- Expanding Social Security: Neglects restoring cost-of-living increases about “fighting every effort to cut, privatize, or weaken Social Security.” Taxing annual incomes above $250,000.
- Immigration: No specifics on comprehensive immigration reform. Only supports “keeping families together, ending family detention, closing private detention centers, and guaranteeing legal counsel for all unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings.”
- Universal Healthcare: Rejected single-payer, Medicare-for-all, despite its manifest popularity and superiority over any other available plan.
- Honoring Tribal Nations: No specifics. No promise to clean up uranium contamination on Navajo land, for example.
- Climate Change And Clean Energy: Rejected any carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gasses and it flatly rejected any freeze on natural gas fracking, leaving the air, underground water, and earthquake-prone areas as vulnerable as ever to the largely unregulated, destructive process. The committee also rejected a ban on fossil fuel drilling on federal land or in federal waters.
- Reproductive Rights: Defends Planned Parenthood, opposes the 1973 Helms Amendment(limited US spending abroad on abortion), and opposes the 1976 Hyde Amendment (limiting domestic federal expenditures on abortion).
- Criminal Justice Reform: Supports “calls for ending the era of mass incarceration, shutting down private prisons, ending racial profiling, reforming the grand jury process, investing in re-entry programs, banning the box to help give people a second chance and prioritizing treatment over incarceration for individuals suffering addiction.” This is tantamount to rejection of Clinton-era “reform,” as well as an implied rebuke to the sitting president, who has done little to end these horrors.
- Marijuana: Rejects legalization, but is for “supporting states that choose to decriminalize marijuana,” without specifying how such support would be expressed (no mention, for example, of removing the stupid federal classification of cannabisas a Schedule I Controlled Substance). Recognizes the racial disparity of the impact of marijuana laws on African Americans (and other minorities), but stopped short of saying what, if anything, to do about that injustice.
- Israel: Rejected a proposal that the US should oppose Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank. The draft platform reflects Clinton’s support for the mirage of a “two state solution” of some sort (not specified). The platform does stake out two new positions for the party: first, that Palestinians “should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and in dignity” and second, that Democrats “oppose any effort to delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [BDS] Movement.” It’s not clear how Democrats will justify both supporting Israel’s illegal occupation and opposing the entirely legal BDS Movement.
- Iraq And Syria: Although there’s a war there the DNC calls for “more inclusive governance” in Iraq and Syria. Seriously?
- Assault Weapons: Not one mumbling word to ban assault weapons, 100-shot clips, and no word on background checks, or any other aspect of gun regulation.
- Military Budget: Don’t ask, don’t tell. A $600 billion a year budget.
- Intelligence Budgets: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Billions more, much in black budgets.
- Terrorism: In the unlikely event that terrorism were actually omitted, that would be a sign of maturity and intellectual integrity, moving away from fear-mongering. It could happen, right? Terror War in Yemen. Yes, the Saudis are the international war criminals fronting for US, but our hands are bloody. And the profits are good, so why bring it up in a party platform? Have you forgotten how divisive Viet Nam was?
- Afghanistan: Not a word about America’s longest war. Long may it wave.
- Saudi Arabia. Turkey. Libya. Etc., etc.: Nothing revealed.
- Poverty: No mumbling word on poverty reduction. There are 47 million poor people in America, as Sanders repeatedly points out. They are as invisible in the Democratic platform as they are in everyday life.
- The omissions: What is the Democratic Party’s policy toward any of the unaddressed issues out there? In favor of war in Ukraine? Itching for Naval confrontation in South China Sea? Wanting to accept England as our 51st state? Who knows? If this is the most progressive party platform the Democrats have ever seen, then the Democrats have never seen a truly progressive platform. Not that that is any reason to stop the shuck and jive.
What about millions of imperial war victims, corpses attesting to bipartisan barbarity – capital punishment on an industrial scale, genocide by any standard!
Undemocratic Democrats like their Republican counterparts aren’t looking out for anyone but themselves and privileged interests they support.
In November, voters should either back independent candidates or none at all – renouncing neocon-infested Democrat and Republican parties once and for all.
Virtually nothing worth supporting. Weasel words about “advancing our party’s progressive ideals…addressing the needs of all Americans,” supporting public education, “looking out for working people,” taxing the super-rich, “expanding Social Security,” curbing prescription drug costs, promoting clean energy, ending mass incarceration, and “Wall Street reform” rang resoundingly hollow.
Even claiming to support the abolition of the death penalty “as a cruel and unusual form of punishment (for) the first time in (party) history” is duplicitous.
I cannot believe they rejected proposals for universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine, a carbon tax, opposition to the anti-consumer, stealth corporate coup d’etat Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and fracking.
Nothing was said about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) -like TPP, involving America and EU countries – both trade bills nightmarish for ordinary people.
Nothing about Washington’s imperial project. Nothing about endless wars of aggression. Nothing about renouncing them, endorsing peace as the party’s top priority.
Nothing about rescinding police state laws. Nothing about endorsing governance of, by and for everyone equitably, the general welfare, making America beautiful for everyone, instead of its privileged few alone.