The Democratic Party’s proposed platform, released Sunday on the eve of the Chicago convention, is full of contrasts between former President Donald Trump and the old Democratic nominee.
The 92-page nonbinding document, which outlines the Democratic National Committee’s priorities for the next four years, will be voted on by delegates at the party’s national convention on Monday. But it hasn’t been updated since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him.
“President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are running to finish the job,” the platform’s preamble says.
Platforms, which lay out the goals and policies the party broadly supports, are typically crafted to mirror the priorities of their presidential nominees. However, Harris officially locked down the Democratic nomination in late July — and only began laying out the details of her policy agenda with the rollout of an economic platform in North Carolina on Friday.
Her campaign has already disavowed some of the more progressive positions she took as a presidential candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary. And because the platform released Sunday night was built for a Biden reelection campaign, it’s not clear whether Harris will support every tenet.
Steve Grossman, a former Democratic National Committee chairman during Bill Clinton’s presidency, said it’s no surprise Harris’ team would not have wanted to “create any divisiveness whatsoever around platform issues” in the short window between her emergence as the party’s nominee and the convention.
“The bigger question that is going to guide everything — and that’s guided everything since the president left the race and Kamala became the nominee — is the question of creating party unity,” Grossman said. “Setting aside differences between different communities and constituencies — and there clearly are differences on a variety of issues — in the service of the greater goal and greater good.”
In many ways, the Democratic platform is already outdated.
On the economy, the platform includes sections about expanding tax credits for working people, but it doesn’t go as far as Harris’ proposal for a $6,000 tax credit for middle-class and working families with newborn children.
And while the platform criticizes companies for keeping prices high even as their costs have come down, it doesn’t include Harris’ proposal for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries.
The platform also includes an entire section on the Israel-Hamas war. While it doesn’t stray from Biden’s support for Israel, which has drawn criticism from some in the party because of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, it does try to highlight the administration’s humanitarian efforts in the enclave.
It calls the commitment to Israel’s security and right to defend itself “ironclad,” while noting Biden has worked “tirelessly” to “surge and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.”
The platform also makes the case for a ceasefire deal, which it says “will lead to a more secure Israel” and “allow for Arab nations and the international community to help rebuild Gaza in a manner that does not allow Hamas to re-arm.”
The document is also explicitly anti-Trump. Section by section, it lays out contrasts with the former president.
On the economy, it argues Trump “is focused on rigging the game for his billionaire donors.” And on the issue of Gaza, it says he “refuses to endorse the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.”
The platform touts the bipartisan border security bill, criticizing Republicans for blocking it in Congress earlier this year because “they lack the courage to stand up to Trump.” That deal, the platform says, “would have made our country safer and made our border more secure, while treating people fairly and humanely and expanding legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation.” In contrast, it attacks Trump’s plans, saying they would “devastate our economy and tear families apart.”
The form of the document itself is also different from the Republicans’.
While the GOP completely reworked its platform this year, resulting in a much briefer 16-page document, which largely highlights broad policy goals, the Democratic platform goes into more on detail on a wider variety of topics.
The foreign policy chapter of the Democratic platform, at just over 14 pages, includes specific sections on Europe, the Middle East, China, the Indo-Pacific, Africa and the Western Hemisphere.
Also included are sections on the environment, gun violence, civil rights and what Biden has called the “Unity Agenda,” which includes the addressing the opioid epidemic and the “Cancer Moonshot” program.
