Here’s What’s in the 2020 Democratic Party Platform [Overview and Full Text]

As Democrats virtually converged to nominate Joe Biden and formally approve the currently-draft platform, voters should know what’s in it.

An overview of the table of contents sets up a host of issues for the party to tackle (links will take you to the related section’s overview):

• PROTECTING AMERICANS AND RECOVERING FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
• BUILDING A STRONGER, FAIRER ECONOMY
• ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL, AFFORDABLE, QUALITY HEALTH CARE
• PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND BUILDING TRUST BY REFORMING OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
• HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA
• COMBATING THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND PURSUING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
• RESTORING AND STRENGTHENING OUR DEMOCRACY
• CREATING A 21ST CENTURY IMMIGRATION SYSTEM
• PROVIDING A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION IN EVERY ZIP CODE
• RENEWING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

But the devil is, as always, in the details. So here’s a breakdown of each of the fairer, more just, world-class reformations that Democrats see as renewing, restoring, and strengthening the nation. I’ve distilled the 80-page manifesto into bullet points, but if you’d like to read the full-on, teeth-gnashing, snarling, full-text version – it’s at the bottom of this page.

PROTECTING AMERICANS AND RECOVERING FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This section starts off by simply trashing the Trump administration – for five loooong paragraphs. Then they basically layout their plan which looks exactly like what the current administration is already doing:

• Use every available tool to beat back the pandemic
• Make COVID-19 testing widely available, convenient and free (it already is)
• Expand oversight and protections for staff and patients at nursing homes
• Rebuild the Federal stockpile of protective equipment
• Use the Defense Production Act
• Follow the advice of scientists and experts

Then they throw taxpayer money at a DNC wishlist:

• Increase funding to states that enroll more people on Medicaid
• Use even more taxpayer funds to pay for health care costs
• Re-open Obamacare marketplaces
• Have taxpayers pay for 100% of COBRA insurance premiums
• Use taxpayer money to increase Obamacare subsidies
• Create a public option and automatically enroll low-income Americans at no cost to them – covered by taxpayers
• Permanently hire 100,000 contact tracers at taxpayer expense
• Reform unemployment insurance to cover more people with higher wage replacement rates
• Expand the food stamp program (SNAP)
• Give massive amounts of taxpayer’s money to state and local governments that have mishandled their own economies
• Taxpayer money to fund childcare
• Prioritize financial support to businesses owned by people of color and women (basically, discrimination based on sex and race)
• Expand paid sick leave to non-employees (contractors, gig workers, etc)
• Government-owned (aka Govt-controlled, taxpayer-funded) broadband internet
• Subsidies from taxpayers to low-income Americans to pay for broadband internet
• The platform alludes to the fact that they would rejoin the World Health Organization

BUILDING A STRONGER, FAIRER ECONOMY

This section contains six paragraphs of trashing Trump, crap stats on wage fairness, and giving Obama credit for the stellar economy that Coronavirus has killed – then comes the fire hose of social justice:

• Reverse the Trump tax cuts (corporate and individual)
• Make tax code more progressive
• Make housing a right (what does this even mean?)
• Raise Federal Minimum Wage to $15/hr
• Create, at taxpayer expense, a government-owned credit reporting agency to compete with private companies
• Strengthen labor unions by repealing “right to work” laws and overall giving unions more power than employers
• Require contractors to prioritize the hiring of minorities and women (more discrimination)
• Equal pay for women
• Paid family leave for everyone – funded by businesses
• Address structural and systemic racism
• Increase taxpayer funding of the Department of Labor
• Increase Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
• Universal pre-K programs
• Build 500,000 electric car charging stations at taxpayer expense
• Take another shot at high-speed rail
• Upgrade ports and locks
• Require American cargo is carried on American-flagged ships
• Require federal infrastructure projects to use union labor
• Strengthen renewable fuels standards (E15)
• Additional environmental regulations for farmers
• All trade deals will center on a core of labor standards, human rights, and environmentalism
• Get rid of Tariffs on China
• $15,000 refundable tax credit for first time home buyers
• Increase taxpayer funds to the Housing Trust Fund to build more low-income housing
• Allow renters to organize into some kind of union
• Stop gentrification
• Strengthen Dodd-Frank and Glass-Steagall
• Increase funding for SNAP, WIC, and School lunches at taxpayer expense
• Some sort of Federal Reserve-connected personal banking option
• Review mergers in biotech and healthcare
• increase Social Security benefits at taxpayer expense

Then they roll out a plan that looks exactly like what the current administration is doing:

• Support Buy American standards on Federally-supported projects
• Expand support for American manufacturing
• End incentives for offshoring
• Accelerate on-shoring of critical supply chains (drugs, med supplies)
• Support apprenticeship programs
• More SBA funding especially in low-income areas and for minorities and woman
• Money for farmers
• Support NASA
• Increase funding for biotechnology, clean energy, clean vehicles, AI, and aerospace
• Stand up to China (while removing tariffs against them?)

ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL, AFFORDABLE, QUALITY HEALTH CARE

Another six paragraphs praising Obama and Biden while trashing Republicans then straight into socialized medicine:

• Create a public (aka: taxpayer-funded) option available through Obamacare
• No deductibles, no co-pays
• Price controls on doctors, drugs, everything
• Lower Medicare enrollment age from 65 to 60
• Double taxpayer investments in community health centers
• Cap premiums for non-public option plans at 8.5% of income (different premiums for people based on how much they make)
• Anti-trust lawsuits against drug companies
• End incarceration for people only convicted on drug charges
• Increase regulation on nursing homes
• Repeal the Hyde Amendment, fight federal and state laws limiting abortion
• Taxpayer-funded “Free” birth control

PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND BUILDING TRUST BY REFORMING OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

• End incarceration for minors
• Limit the sale of military surplus items to police departments
• Limit use of qualified immunity by law enforcement
• End incarceration for drug offenses
• Eliminate cash bail
• End incarceration for failure to pay fines
• Increase taxpayer funding for public defenders
• Increase taxpayer funding for the Legal Services Corporation
• Repeal mandatory minimum sentences
• Abolish the death penalty
• End private prisons and detention centers
• End solitary confinement
• Allow felons to access Pell Grants and Food Stamps.

HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA

This entire section is little more than a social justice wish list and a dab of anti-gun policy.

• End racial and religious profiling by law enforcement
• Force Federal Reserve to report on racial employment and wage gaps
• More taxpayer money for low-income neighborhoods
• Incentivize private companies to hire more people of color and women (more discrimination)
• “Tackle environmental racism”
• Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment
• Take action to end pay inequality for women
• Guarantee transgender students access to facilities based on their gender identity instead of scientific facts like their sex
• Prioritize investigations of hate crimes against non-binary people
• Return federal land to Tribal nations
• increase taxpayer funding for Tribal nations
• Extend public option to Tribal nations at taxpayer expense
• Expand the Violence Against Women Act
• More taxpayer money to process rape kits
• Have taxpayers fund CDC studies on gun violence as a public health issue
• Enact universal background checks
• Incentivize states to require licenses to purchase firearms
• Push for “red flag” laws
• Require guns to be locked up in homes
• Repeal law that prevents gun manufacturers from being held liable if a person uses their produce to harm someone else
• Force businesses to serve customers even if it goes against their religious beliefs

COMBATING THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND PURSUING ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE

In short, put all the regulations Trump got rid of, back in place and rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement..

• Re-implement the regulations that the Trump administration has repealed
• Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement
• Re-implement the Waters of the U.S.
• Increase methane and carbon restrictions on energy industry
• Unionize green energy sector
• Invest taxpayer money in people of color and women
• End all carbon pollution from energy plants by 2035
• Install 500 million solar panels and 60,000 wind turbines within 5 years at taxpayer expense
• use taxpayer funds to make up to 2 million low-income homes more energy efficient
• Net-zero greenhouse emissions for all new buildings as of 2030
• Let California create it’s own vehicle emissions standards again
• Tariffs on imports from countries that don’t live up to the Paris Climate Agreement

RESTORING AND STRENGTHENING OUR DEMOCRACY

Make voter fraud great again. Oh, and give Democrats two more Senators and another Representative by making Washington, D.C. a state. Honestly, they could just annex it into Maryland if all they wanted was representation.

• Fight Voter ID laws
• Stop purging of voter roles (the dead and non-resident voter population rejoices)
• Restore voting rights for felons
• Fight for vote-from-home and vote-by-mail (that went so well in 2020)
• Make sure immigrants are counted in the Census (too late)
• Increase investments in voting technologies
• Eliminate all private financing for federal elections
• Use taxpayer money to match funds for federal candidates
• Prevent PACs from bundling money for any candidate for which they lobby
• Require any federal candidate to disclose 10 years of tax returns
• Make Washington, D.C. a state
• Allow U.S. territories to vote for President of the U.S.A.
• Forgive disaster loans to Puerto Rico
• Give Puerto Rico full access to SNAP, Medicaid and Child Tax Credits
• Money for the U.S. Virgin Islands to recover from Hurricanes
• Fight efforts to privatize the USPS
• Eliminate requirement for USPS to pre-fund its retirement obligations
• Allow shipping of alcoholic beverages by mail
• Banking by mail

CREATING A 21ST CENTURY IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

Five paragraphs of Trump-bashing later, we get to the open borders policies that Democrats love:

• Rescind the National Emergency order that covers illegal immigration
• Immediately end all travel and immigration bans
• Expand protections for DREAMers and their parents
• End “safe third nation” policy that has immigrants apply for asylum closer to their country of origin
• End requirement that immigrants must show that they can support themselves before being allowed entry
• Roadmap to Citizenship for all illegal aliens (amnesty)
• Expand visa caps
• Roadmap to citizenship for Temporary Protected Status aliens
• End workplace raids designed to catch businesses who knowingly hire illegal aliens
• End detention centers for captured illegal aliens – return to catch and release
• End current freeze on new green cards

PROVIDING A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION IN EVERY ZIP CODE

Taxpayer-funded “Free” college tuition, a lot more money for public schools and student loan debt forgiveness.

• Expand Head Start and Early Head Start
• Triple all Title I taxpayer funding for public schools in low-income areas
• Expand free lunch program
• Ban taxpayer funding to certain charter school programs
• Fight against private school voucher programs
• Fight against school segregation
• End standards based testing
• Taxpayer-funded “Free” college tuition for students of families making less than $125,000
• Double maximum Pell Grant award at taxpayer expense
• Taxpayer-funded grants for minority schools
• Tuition-free community colleges for everyone, including DREAMers at taxpayer expense
• Taxpayer funds for on-campus child care
• Create a new federal, taxpayer-funded program for public universities based on proportion of low-income students
• $10,000 per student in student debt relief
• Defer student loan payments for anyone making less than $25,000/year and cap payments at 5% of income.
• Forgive any remaining student loan debt remaining after 20 years
• Forgive tuition portion of student loan debt for anyone making less than $125,000/year
• Allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy

RENEWING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

10 paragraphs of Trump-bashing in this section, best get right to what Democrats have planned for our military and diplomatic corps. It’s mostly platitudes and non-committal gobly-gook, but I’ll see if we can’t find any actionable stuff in this part.

• Reject “America First” policies
• Strengthen the State Department
• Enable and protect the Diplomats
• “Repair our alliances” – not sure which ones…
• Rejoin the World Health Organization and fully fund it with taxpayer money
• Increase taxpayer-funded foreign aid
• End forever wars
• End support for war in Yemen
• Cut defense spending
• Path to citizenship for military service
• Ban veterans from using benefits at non-public education institutions
• Develop 5G
• Push for greater participation by women in global workforce
• End suffering around the globe
• Fight global corruption with targeted visa bans and sanctions

Democratic Party Platform 2020 [Full Text]:

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