This year, the platform matters
PHILADELPHIA — It isn’t often that a party’s political platform gets attention in prime time. Usually the statements of vision and values are of interest to party insiders and no one else.
But there was Minnesota’s U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison on Monday night, introducing presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with the boast, “We are united around the most progressive platform in history.”
Mr. Sanders himself made a similar claim moments later. Thanks to a “significant coming together between the two campaigns,” he
said, “we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”
That matters both politically and philosophically, observers say.
For Democrats trying to avert the splintering of Mr. Sanders’ supporters, incorporating his political mindset into the platform offers a chance to create ties that don’t bind.
“The platform is something you can make concessions on because a president doesn’t have to follow it,“said Christopher Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College. “The same thing happened with the Republicans,” some of whose evangelical voters distrust nominee Donald Trump. The platform took harsh position on LGBT and other “values” issues.
But while Mr. Trump chose a vice-presidential candidate that appeals to conservatives — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence — Ms. Clinton’s choice of moderate Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia only antagonized some Sanders supporters further.
“She doesn’t have a [progressive like] Sen. Elizabeth Warren to wheel out,” said Mr. Borick, making the platform all the more important.
But platforms do have policy consequences as well.
“The platform signals the direction of the party, and issues that are important to the rank-and-file, “said Armstrong County delegate Chuck Pascal, the lone Pittsburgh-area delegate to serve on the committee responsible for drafting the party’s platform. “It means that we can say to officials, ‘This is the attitude of the party and of your voters.’ ”
Mr. Pascal, in concert with allies including American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten, scored a coup of his own earlier this summer by amending the platform’s education provisions. His changes pushed back on educators’ reliance on standardized test scores, among other proposals.
In his Monday night speech, Mr. Sanders cited a number of key additions, including tougher financial oversight provisions for big banks. Other language urges requiring the federal Department of Justice “to investigate all questionable or suspicious police-involved shootings.”
And while the party has long called for a minimum wage hike, this year it pegged the increase “over time” to $15 an hour — a target long espoused by activists — and indexed to inflation. While the platform doesn't include an outright ban on “fracking” for natural gas, it does state the process “should not take place where states and local communities oppose it.”
Similarly, the platform goes beyond espousing abortion rights to urging repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars tax dollars from being used to fund abortion.
Many left-leaning observers were pleased.
“It’s the difference between being an ally and being a champion,” said Sasha Bruce, a vice president for strategy and campaigns for abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Those principles are in the platform, and we have officially committed to it. And we are backing it up with actual policies. That's significant.”
That movement has shored up Ms. Clinton’s support in some quarters.
“In Pennsylvania it seems to have helped that the platform reflects a lot of Sanders’ positions,” said Mr. Pascal, a delegate for Sanders. “The challenge is to hold her and the other Democrats to it, and to keep organizing around those issues.”
But for many Sanders supporters, the platform isn’t perfect. It does not, for example, reject the TransPacific Partnership, a proposed trade deal between the U.S. and Asian countries that is detested within the Sanders movement. Its demand for “strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards“is harsher than the 2012 platform, which lauded the TPP as a “historic high-standard agreement that will ... create more American jobs.” But it still leaves the trade deal intact.
“We’re … quite frankly frustrated and upset that the Democratic platform does not include a Medicare-forall position,” Rose Roach, a Sanders supporter and head of a Minnesota nurses unions, told reporters this morning.
“Medicare for all” is shorthand for a governmentrun system that would supplant private insurers. The platform does mention a “public option,” in which Americans could choose a government-run program, But Ms. Roach feared that insurers would “cherry-pick” more healthy customers and the option “could end up becoming a pool of sicker people.”
“The platform is certainly one of the things Democrats are offering” to Sanders backers, said Terry Madonna, a veteran pollster at Franklin & Marshall College. “But when is the last time you heard a candidate run for president by quoting their platform?”
Chris Potter: cpotter@postgazette.com or 412-263-2533 or @CPotterPgh