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'History Will Not Judge This Kindly': DNC Platform Committee Votes Down Medicare for All Amendment
"It's like opposing the New Deal during the Great Depression. Unforgivable."
Jul 28, 2020
A Democratic National Committee panel on Monday voted down an amendment that would have inserted a plank supporting Medicare for All into the party's 2020 platform, a move progressives decried as out of touch with public opinion and a slap in the face to the millions of people who have lost their health insurance due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The DNC Platform Committee rejected the Medicare for All amendment introduced by longtime single-payer advocate Michael Lighty by a vote of 36-125 during a virtual meeting Monday. The committee also voted down separate attempts to include support for expanding Medicare to children, dropping the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, and legalizing marijuana.
"Shameful. And during a pandemic," tweeted progressive radio host Kyle Kulinksi in response to the defeat of the Medicare for All amendment. "History will not judge this kindly. It's like opposing the New Deal during the Great Depression. Unforgivable."
\u201cBREAKING: The DNC Platform Committee has VOTED DOWN support for #MedicareForAll: 36 yes - 125 no - 3 abstain\u201d— People for Bernie (@People for Bernie) 1595881355
Winnie Wong, former senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, tweeted late Monday that she "can't even imagine what went on in the heads of those 125 DNC Platform Committee members who voted Medicare or All down."
"The fact that our nation is the only advanced industrial country without universal healthcare cannot be blamed on Republican obstruction alone. It was also caused by Democratic leaders who've spent decades catering to corporate interests."
--Jeff Cohen, RootsAction.org
"Today. Now. When the country is in the deathgrip of a global pandemic and people are dying because they can't afford to the upkeep of their sick-care," Wong wrote. "Shameful."
Lighty said ahead of the vote that with more than 100 million people and counting either uninsured or underinsured amid a deadly pandemic, "it is vital that the Democratic Party join the NAACP, the Poor People's Campaign, the Rising Majority, Mijente, community-based organizations all over the country and demand guaranteed healthcare for all through an improved Medicare for All system."
Speaking in support of Lighty's amendment during the platform meeting Monday, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, former health director for the city of Detroit and 2018 Michigan gubernatorial candidate, said the Covid-19 pandemic has "revealed that our house of healthcare was built of straw."
"We have a for-profit healthcare system that's left 27 million more people without healthcare because we attached healthcare to jobs," said El-Sayed.
As of late Tuesday, more than 600 DNC delegates had signed a petition vowing to vote against the Democratic platform if it doesn't include support for Medicare for All, a policy solution supported by around 80% of Democratic voters and a majority of House Democrats. Most of the petition's signatories are Sanders delegates, according to organizers, but some Biden delegates have also signed on.
Mike Casca, a spokesman for Sanders, said in a statement that the Vermont senator "believes that the Democratic Party platform should advocate strongly for Medicare for All."
"The senator appreciates that, amid a deadly pandemic which is creating a national health emergency, his delegates understand that now more than ever we must guarantee healthcare as a human right," Casca said.
The draft (pdf) version of the Democratic platform includes one mention of Medicare for All but does not endorse the policy that would provide comprehensive healthcare to everyone in the U.S. for free at the point of service.
"Generations of Democrats have been united in the fight for universal healthcare," the draft reads. "We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach; all are critical to ensuring that healthcare is a human right."
Progressives said the brief nod is nowhere near enough. "Democrats who understand the profound need for Medicare for All don't want a pat on the head," Norman Solomon, national director of progressive advocacy group RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate from California, told Politico on Monday. "We want a genuine political commitment to healthcare as a human right."
In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Tuesday, RootsAction.org co-founder Jeff Cohen wrote that "the fact that our nation is the only advanced industrial country without universal healthcare cannot be blamed on Republican obstruction alone."
"It was also caused by Democratic leaders who've spent decades catering to corporate interests (while collecting their campaign donations)--and refusing to fight for universal coverage," Cohen added. "This history of Democratic obstruction and vacillation is why hundreds of elected delegates to next month's Democratic convention have put their foot down."
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Backers of Sanders Mobilize to Overthrow DNC Platform's Pro-TPP Stance
'Opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party,' declares progressive advocacy group. So why is it?
Jun 30, 2016
Before the Democratic Party's platform is finalized at a meeting late next week, Bernie Sanders and his progressive allies are mobilizing to ensure that opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—described by its critics as a global corporate power grab—becomes the party's official stance.
Though President Obama continues to lobby hard on behalf of the controversial deal, and despite a proposal to include such language being voted down during a drafting session last weekend in St. Louis, Sanders and his supporters are making their case into a rallying cry about the future of the Democratic Party.
On Wednesday, the Sanders campaign and Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group, launched petitions calling on the platform committee to include the anti-TPP language in the final version.
"The Democratic Platform includes a number of very important initiatives that we have been fighting to achieve during this campaign," reads the petition from the Sanders campaign. "But one big item is missing: preventing the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal from ever coming up for a vote in Congress."
In addition to citing Sanders' and Clinton's publicly stated opposition to the TPP, the Sanders petition points out that key Democratic voting blocs—including "virtually every labor union, environmental group, and even major religious groups"—also oppose it. The petition argues that the party should now "go on record in opposition to holding a vote on the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress and beyond."
According to DFA's petition, "opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party: Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigned against the TPP during this year's presidential primary."
Though many have questioned Clinton's resolute opposition to the TPP, others are willing to take her at her word and argue that Obama and other pro-TPP forces within the Democratic Party undermined her campaign by not following through. Either way, outside progressive forces have remained vigilant against the corporate-friendly agreement even as Obama argues for it.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in the New York Times this week, Sanders warned the Democratic leadership they needed to "wake up" when it comes to recognizing just how frustrated working people and the poor are when it comes to an economic system that is so clearly rigged against them.
While the 15-member committee voted down the measure in St. Louis by a 10-5 vote--with the five Sanders-appointed members voting in favor and all the Clinton- and DNC-appointed members voting against--the split offers a window into how Sanders and the millions of voters inspired by his campaign hope to influence the party in the weeks and months ahead. In turn, the battle over TPP and similar fights related to the minimum wage, climate action, and universal healthcare will reveal much about how the party establishment, currently transitioning its leadership from Obama to Clinton, will respond to the groundswells from below.
As the Washington Post reports Thursday, members of the platform panel who voted to reject the anti-TPP proposal said the White House's influence, not their own feelings on TPP, most impacted their decision.
Citing "people with knowledge of the platform negotiations," the newspaper reports how
Sanders used his post-primary meeting with the president to say he would push for the party to officially oppose the TPP. The president said he would now allow it. And since then, the White House has leaned on key Democrats to make sure that the platform did not include a rebuke.
This is how Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), co-chair of the platform committee, explained his vote: "We have one president, and I have listened to him argue his case many times, and I know that he truly believes this. He really does. I disagree with him, but I don't want to do anything, as he ends his term, to undercut the president. I'm just not going to do it. In his last six months? I'm not gonna do that."
Sanders, however, appears very willing to challenge the president on the issue that he believes will so negatively impact the planet, people, and communities for generations to come.
"Well, I don't want to embarrass the president either. He's a friend," Sanders told USA Today in an interview this week. "But in a Democratic society, people can have disagreements."
In a series of tweets that began Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, he made it clear that the fight over TPP is among the foremost issues on his mind:
\u201cOur job is to do everything we can to rally support for an amendment to the platform in strong opposition to the TPP. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467235477
\u201cTell the DNC: We have gotta strongly oppose bad trade agreements like the TPP in the Party Platform. #StopTPP\nhttps://t.co/PdXXerIGt0\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467242708
\u201cThe TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities all over this country. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467248463
\u201cWe need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just corporate CEOs. Democrats must do all they can to defeat the TPP. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467293695
\u201cTrade is a good thing but it has to be fair. And the TPP is anything but fair. We must ensure the TPP doesn't come up for a vote. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467299525
The question, however, remains: If a majority of the Democrats on the panel oppose the TPP, the presumptive nominee opposes it, and the challenging candidate who won 22 primary contests by stirring the hopes of millions of voters opposes it, why can't the DNC leadership take this opportunity to recalibrate the party's trajectory on this seminal issue?
The full Democratic Platform Committee will meet in Orlando on July 8th and 9th to approve the final draft of the platform.
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Trump Just Drove a Truck Through Hole DNC Platform Panel Left in Clinton's TPP Promise
Platform committee's waffling on trade leaves Clinton vulnerable to Trump's predictable attacks
Jun 28, 2016
Laying bare how dangerous it could be for Democrats to ignore populist opposition to corporate-friendly "free trade" deals, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday attacked Hillary Clinton for her stance on trade in general and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in particular.
In Monessen, Pennsylvania, Trump said the "TPP would be the death blow for American manufacturing" and vowed to "withdraw" the U.S. from the agreement.
According to prepared remarks, he said Clinton took "a leading part" in drafting the 12-nation deal, noting that the former secretary of state "praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions and even called it the 'gold standard'.
"Hillary Clinton was totally for the TPP just a short while ago, but when she saw my stance, which is totally against it, she was shamed into saying she would be against it too," he said. "But have no doubt, she will immediately approve it if it is put before her, guaranteed. She will do this just as she has betrayed American workers for Wall Street throughout her career."
With this claim, MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald wrote on Twitter, Trump appeared to be "speaking directly to [Bernie] Sanders supporters." Sanders has made opposition to the TPP and other rights-trampling deals a cornerstone of his campaign.
Trump also said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)--and placed partial blame for that deal at Clinton's feet. "It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA in 1993 and Hillary Clinton who supported it," he said.
The real estate mogul's speech follows the Democratic National Committee's platform drafting panel's vote not to oppose the TPP, despite the fact that both Clinton and Sanders have opposed the deal. As Common Dreams reported, the Clinton-allied majority on the committee outvoted the Sanders delegates 10-5 to defeat the anti-TPP measure, citing President Barack Obama's support.
In doing so, argues Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America's Future in an op-ed Tuesday, they handed Trump "powerful ammunition" for his claims that Clinton is only "pretending" to oppose the agreement.
Johnson writes:
TPP and past "trade" deals are incredibly unpopular with working-class voters, and Republicans are preparing a full-scale attack on Clinton's credibility over the unpopular TPP. They are making the case that Clinton actually supports TPP but is pretending she does not in order to get votes. They say the president's efforts to pass TPP in the post-election "lame duck" session back up their claims. This pro-TPP vote by Clinton supporters on the platform committee will likely bolster the Republican argument.
[...] It appears that the party elite just don't understand the public's overwhelming opposition to TPP. The pro-TPP members of the platform committee say they must support a Democratic president. But what about the interests of the public, labor and working people, the environment, the economy and their own nominee?
In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday, Sanders agreed that the committee's established voices were working against the party and undermining Clinton's stated position.
"I was quite surprised to see that Secretary Clinton's delegates rejected our proposal to kill the TPP even though she has indicated she does not want to see it get onto the floor [of the U.S. Congress]," Sanders told Mitchell.
Meanwhile, as in the primary campaign, Clinton's refusal to come out swinging against corporate-friendly trade deals is costing her support of working-class voters in the general election--a dynamic Public Citizen's Lori Wallach predicted back in March when she declared: "Americans' opposition to job-killing trade policies fueled the stunning Bernie Sanders upset victory in Michigan. However, it could also be a deciding factor in the general election, especially with Donald Trump being the likely GOP nominee. The outcome of the Michigan primary shows the potency of trade issues and foreshadows the trouble Hillary Clinton could face winning key Midwestern states in a race against Trump."
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