Why the Democrats’ Platform Actually Matters This Year
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
Cross-posted to Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016157678
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