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By Robert A. Vella

In a media appearance on Sunday, Bernie Sanders explained what happened after his attempts to make the Democratic Party platform more progressive for the upcoming 2016 presidential election.

Wins

  • Support $15 minimum wage.
  • Abolish the death penalty.
  • Expand Social Security.
  • Implement an “updated and modernized” (whatever that means) version of the Glass-Steagall Act (the 1933 law which had prohibited the co-mingling of commercial and investment banking, and which was repealed in 1999 by a neoliberal Democratic President and his neoliberal Republican allies in Congress).

Losses

  • Refusal to oppose neoliberal President Obama’s controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal.
  • Rejection of a proposed freeze on natural gas fracking (i.e. hydraulic fracturing) nationwide.
  • Rejection of a proposed carbon tax to cut greenhouse gas emissions and hasten the transition to clean energy.
  • Rejection of ideas to implement a national single-payer healthcare system.

Further reading:  Sanders: ‘We lost some very important fights’ in Democratic platform

7 thoughts on “Sanders: Wins and Losses in effort to make the Democratic Party platform more progressive”

  1. Apparently, then, the Democratic Party no longer cares about the environment, workers or people who still can’t afford quality health care? Disappointing, even with the slight concessions deigned wins. Have to keep an eye on that Glass-Steagall one – seems pretty squishy. The environmental stuff sounds written to appease the fossil fuel industry and totally nix any progress on climate change.

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    • That’s a fair assessment. Although, I believe they do care about those issues. It’s just that they are bound to serve interests which do not care. A very fine line, perhaps, and likely the crux of their dilemma.

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  2. Clinton’s attempts at appeasing the left were always feeble at best. Look for a Clinton Administration to be even less progressive than the Obama Administration has proven to be. TPP Appears headed for a vote in the lame duck session, which would negate any need for her to backtrack on that one again – unless she openly opposes the notion of lame duck passage before the election.

    Minimum wage legislation is so far overdue that states have had to raise theirs in lieu of a raise of the Federal rate. Sad that George W. Bush was the last to raise it.

    You are right, I think, to say that they are bound to serve interests which do not care about these issues. Those interests seem diametrically opposed to ours in this regard. Too bad we lose out when dealing with GOP or Corporate Dems. Since that is the choice we seem to have been given in this election, I’m not optimistic we’ll see many positive outcomes pertaining to these issues for at least the next four years

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    • I completely agree. As I told a fellow blogger recently, it looks like we progressives not only have little political representation, but we also don’t seem to have a political party anymore.

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  3. Perhaps the Greens or Justice will be more representative than the Democrats. For them to become an electoral force to be recksoned with will take a lot of work, but I think it would be effort better spent than continuing to try to remake either current major party more responsive to our needs.

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  4. Pingback: Irreconcilable Differences: How the Dems’ Clinton/Sanders split looks like a messy divorce | The Secular Jurist

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