Saturday Open Thread [7.2.2016]

So this is where I am going for the week. I am going to try my best to unplug, and I have turned over the Open Thread duties to my wonderful colleagues and friends here at DL, save a Fourth of July Open Thread that I have already written and scheduled. I think the topic in that post will be an interesting conversation, so be sure to read it.

But before I go….

The Nation says the GOP war on voting is working: “But the two states have clashed sharply in recent years, becoming case studies in the difference between Democratic and Republican rule. Whereas Wisconsin elected Walker and a GOP legislature in 2010, Minnesota narrowly elected Mark Dayton, and two years later a Democratic legislature… Nowhere is this difference starker than in the states’ approaches to voting.”

“The divide illustrates how the United States is fast becoming a two-tiered democracy, a country where it’s harder to vote in Republican-controlled states and easier to vote in Democratic ones. There are some notable exceptions—New York, a blue state, ranked 47th in the Pew Charitable Trust’s 2012 Elections Performance Index, while North Dakota, a red state, ranked No. 1—but the trend is unmistakable. Of the 22 states that have passed new voting restrictions since 2010, more than 80 percent were under Republican control, while the states, such as Oregon and California, that have recently passed ambitious reforms like automatic voter registration are overwhelmingly Democratic.”

"We should support Trump because our constitution provides a way of checking a madman President." Quite a position. https://t.co/poj2YVYt42

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 2, 2016

So here is the Draft Democratic Party Platform.

The platform won’t be finalized until the Platform Committee meets in a week, followed by a vote at the party’s convention in Philadelphia. The proposal includes a host of liberal policy ideas, including raising the minimum wage to $15 nationwide; opposing an increase in the retirement age and cuts to Social Security; taxing top earners more to pay into the Social Security trust fund; securing equal pay for women and 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for all workers; and abolishing the death penalty. Whether the inclusion of a host of progressive policy throughout the document will be enough to appease Sen. Bernie Sanders remains to be seen. If Bernie were a smart tactical politican, he would declare victory. Why? Because look at what he has won in terms of concessions:

Sanders’s policy director Warren Gunnels told the Washington Post that the platform is off to an “excellent start” and that “the process itself has been very good.”

The Post identified six key victories for Sanders that were later confirmed by the DNC’s draft:

Federal reserve reform: The new platform says the party will fight against allowing bank executives from sitting on Federal Reserve boards.

Closing the revolving door: The party will also move to “ban golden parachutes for those taking government jobs” and seek to bar bank regulators from taking any action related to their former employers, according to the draft of the platform.

Wall Street reform: The party would also seek to crack down on Wall Street by severing banks’ ability to choose the credit agency that rates their products.

Postal Service banking services: “Democrats believe that we need to give Americans affordable banking options, including by empowering the United States Postal Service to facilitate the delivery of basic banking services,” the draft of the platform states. (Vox’s Matt Yglesias explains that idea here.)

Loopholes for estates and hedge funds: The draft also has strong, Sanders-like language on the need to “immediately close egregious loopholes like those enjoyed by hedge fund managers, restore fair taxation on multimillion dollar estates, and ensure millionaires can no longer pay a lower rate than their secretaries.”

Use closing loopholes to create jobs: The Post also notes that Sanders’s aide cheered the commitment to put the revenue from closing loopholes toward rebuilding infrastructure and creating jobs.

These new positions come on top of platform victories for Sanders that emerged from meetings last weekend on the party’s platform committee in Orlando. The party’s platform had already agreed to move leftward on several issues:

Death penalty: The party’s platform also has new language calling for the eradication of the death penalty. “We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment,” the platform states. “It has no place in the United States of America.” That’s a win for Sanders, who had called for absolutist opposition to the death penalty. (Clinton has backed its use in limited circumstances.)

Earned income tax credit: The 2016 platform’s draft language will call on a specific expansion of the EITC to “low wage workers who don’t have children and to workers age 21 and older,” according to the party’s news release. (The 2012 platform only praised President Obama for expanding the EITC in general, according to the Washington Post’s David Weigel.)

Criminal justice reform: Another part of the draft platform calls for an end to “the era of mass incarceration, shutting down private prisons, ending racial profiling, reforming the grand jury process, investing in re-entry programs, banning the box to help give people a second chance and prioritizing treatment over incarceration for individuals suffering addiction.” This is a big change from 2012 — when the party’s platform had the narrower aim of wanting to “understand the disproportionate effects of crime, violence, and incarceration on communities of color” and expressed a commitment to “working with those communities to find solutions.”

Fighting for a $15-an-hour minimum wage: This was a quasi-win for Sanders’s forces: The party’s platform draft does say that “Americans should earn at least $15 an hour,” and it calls for the minimum wage to be increased. But Sanders complained that his delegates didn’t get quite what he wanted: a commitment from the party to raise the federal minimum wage to the $15 figure.

You know what? I'm fine with this. If you're that bigoted, you should sit in your own shit. https://t.co/N8LssHtK1E

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) June 30, 2016