Dems united against Trump but not on policy
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Democrats made one thing clear with the virtual pageantry of their convention last week: They’re united to defeat President Donald Trump in November.
The festivities also foreshadowed another looming fight, this one between the moderate and progressive wings of the party.
The convention sketched out a policy agenda for nominee Joe Biden in broad strokes, showcasing his big-picture priorities without citing many dollar figures.
That helped Democrats appeal to as wide a universe of voters as possible. It also allowed them to skirt the policy disagreements between moderates such as Biden and the progressive wing of the party led by the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, which has claimed several notable victories in congressional primaries this year.
“It’s not that we’ve changed our opinions on what is necessary,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said after the convention.
Citing the crisis facing the country, she predicted Biden “is going to be pushed by the times to be bold.”
“We have to do some immediate things, and the task will be to make them as progressive as possible, with the platform being sort of the floor and not the ceiling,” Jayapal said.
Here’s a guide to the policy vision that was outlined at the convention — and the disagreements that may flare up.
Health care
Democrats furthered a message that propelled their candidates to success in the 2018 midterm elections: The party wants to expand health coverage while Trump and the Republicans want to take it away.
Biden is a capable messenger on the issue, having been at President Barack Obama’s side when the president signed into law the Affordable Care Act.
But in the Democratic primary, no major issue showed a starker division within the party.
Biden made the case for expanding on the Affordable Care Act and offering a government-run insurance plan known as a public option. Other Democrats, particularly Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, advocated “Medicare for All,” a government-run health insurance system under which private coverage would be eliminated.
That debate continues to this day. Sanders acknowledged it in his convention speech, saying: “Joe and I disagree on the best path to get universal coverage.”
Instead of dwelling on that point, he made note of Biden’s plans to expand coverage, reduce the cost of prescription drugs and lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 60 from 65.
Climate change
As wildfires tore across California and two hurricanes converged in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since record-keeping began, Democrats made climate change a central theme of the convention and Biden named it among the “four historic crises” facing America.
His plan calls for spending $2 trillion over four years to escalate the use of clean energy. It sets a goal of eliminating planet-warming emissions from the power sector by 2035, as well as upgrading 4 million buildings and weatherizing 2 million homes over four years to increase energy efficiency.
In a parallel policy plank that Biden issued around environmental justice, he set a goal of ensuring disadvantaged communities receive 40 percent of the benefits of spending on clean energy and other areas.
“It’s not only a crisis, it’s an enormous opportunity,” Biden said in his speech accepting the nomination. “An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new goodpaying jobs in the process.”
But his policy still leaves some progressives unhappy, particularly when it comes to the shale drilling technique known as fracking. Many of his rivals in the primary — including Sen. Kamala Harris of California, whom he selected this month to be his running mate — have called for a national ban on fracking.
Biden has said he supports a moratorium on new leases on federal lands but not a full ban. It’s a particularly sensitive issue in swing states such as shale-rich Pennsylvania, which Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 percentage point.
The pandemic
Central to Biden’s campaign pitch is the promise that he can respond to the coronavirus crisis in a competent manner — and steer the economy back on track.
In his acceptance speech, Biden ticked off his plan for confronting the virus head-on, including expanding testing, giving a megaphone to public health experts and mandating that people wear masks.
One open question, for instance, is the size of an economic package Biden might seek next winter, and what steps the federal government should take to provide financial assistance to Americans.
Before she was picked as Biden’s running mate, for example, Harris teamed up with two colleagues, Sanders and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, to propose giving $2,000 monthly cash payments to Americans throughout the crisis.
Biden has signaled that he’s open to big policy solutions to revive the economy. But they might not be big enough for some progressives.
Racial justice
Biden has long-standing ties to police unions, and he hasn’t gone as far as some on the left in his comments on how policing in America should be changed. He has rejected the “defund the police” movement, though he has expressed openness to reallocating some funds, and he has proposed increasing funding for community policing.
Like others in his party, he supports tighter gun control measures, but he hasn’t called for a national licensing program and mandatory gun buybacks, as some of his primary rivals have. He hasn’t endorsed legalizing marijuana, a move widely supported by Democratic voters.