Why the Democrats’ Platform Actually Matters This Year

[silvershadow]

Why the Democrats’ Platform Actually Matters This Year

It’s how Hillary and Bernie will make peace.

By Jim Newell

In 2012, Barney Frank, then in his last year in Congress, helped write the Democratic national platform. At least he thinks he did.

“I don’t remember what was in it,” says Frank, who was a member of the platform committee at that year’s Democratic National Convention, “and it wasn’t a very interesting tour of duty.” Describing the platform as the “Miss Congeniality of the convention process,” the former Massachusetts representative says everything besides the nomination of the president and the vice president is just this “Model U.N. kind of stuff.”

“Maybe you are a particularly savvy person,” he adds, “but I can’t remember much that’s been in any platform.”

Four years later, the Democratic primary is slogging toward a conclusion in which the platform will play a significantly larger role—Miss Swimsuit, let’s say. At the moment, Hillary Clinton, a couple of weeks from officially clinching the party nomination, is struggling to unite Democrats around her candidacy. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, shows no indication that he is excited to throw his support her way once he’s been defeated. He is going to want meaningful concessions about the way the Democratic Party does business, what it believes in, and for whom it acts.

more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/why_the_democrats_platform_actually_matters_this_year.html

[zalinda]

1. Even if it is in the platform

it doesn't guarantee that the Democratic Party will represent what it says. Therein lies the problem.

Z

[Baobab]

3. What does it say, the Democratic Party itself doesnt say anything. Does it?

I heard again and again that Obama was not making any promises. Also people should keep in mind that promises made by Presidential campaigns are notorious for being dishonest or plain lies.

The biggest on paper promises the US has made are those in the WTO GATS. They are binding.

There is also an "our Turn" problem with Less Developed Nations where they see themselves as entitled to the opening of the US services market to their firms to compete in, and they expect to do well because their costs are so low.

Low cost is their competitive advantage. One of the benefits of the GATS agreement is the lowering of costs to businesses by increased competition.

That means lowering, not raising wages.

[Baobab]

2. However a lot of things are going out of our hands to the WTO

as soon as they are globalized (Hillary's "solutions" for virtually everything involve massive shifts to low bidding likely-to-be-foreign firms-and-their-workers, i.e. globalization of once-government or quasi-public-sector jobs now thought of as secure)

[alarimer]

4. It doesn't matter, sine they never adhere to it anyway.

It's all about helping the corporations.