Why Has the Dem Platform Veered Right on the Economy?

I reviewed the Democratic Party platform for 2024 and found something interesting: When it comes to economic policy, this year’s platform is less progressive and less ambitious than it was four years ago. Democrats have tacked right or retreated on health insurance reform, drug prices, Medicare and Social Security expansion, poverty, labor, taxes, Wall Street, and the minimum wage.

(I didn’t review military policy, since David Swanson has done that, as have Stephen Zunes and Matthew Petti. Schuyler Mitchell has reviewed its handling of immigration and policing.)

Why become less ambitious on economic issues, especially when public confidence in the economy remains low? Is it the influence of big donors? Is it the willingness of the party’s internal left to back its candidates without first demanding policy concessions? Is it both?

Democrats are less likely to win it with a platform that reflects the politics of caution—which, for voters, means the soft despair of the status quo.

Lobbying certainly played a part. 2024’s scaled-back health proposals, for example, are a big win for the for-profit health sector and its massive lobbying investment. Health corporations spent $751,540,000 (more than three-quarters of a billion dollars) on lobbying in 2023 alone. They employed 3,344 lobbyists, which is more than six lobbyists for every member of Congress. (Source: Open Secrets, using Senate records.)

My economic views are well to the left of the Democratic Party’s, even in its best years. But these changes don’t just repudiate the left. They defy public opinion on one issue after another, driving the party backward even as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris runs as the candidate of change.

Party platforms aren’t exactly binding contracts, of course, and this one was written while President Joe Biden was still the presumptive nominee. Vice President Harris has already proposed several changes, including a $6,000 tax credit for the first year of a child’s life and a first-time homebuyer’s credit of $25,000 instead of the platform’s $10,000. But her changes have not been substantial, at least so far.

The platform still matters. It represents the consensus view of the party’s leadership and, despite the references to reelecting Biden, was adopted just this week at the convention.

This year’s platform also undercuts a favored argument from the Democratic Party’s left wing: that Biden has been “the most progressive president since FDR.” That’s always been debatable. Biden has been anything but progressive on military issues (including the Gaza genocide). By contrast, Lyndon Johnson’s domestic achievements included Medicare and Medicaid, major anti-poverty legislation, and the Voting Rights Act.

Biden did notch some progressive achievements, however, and would have had more had he not been hamstrung by Congress. A party in this situation wouldn’t normally lower its ambitions. It would raise them, pledging to do more if given full control of Congress.

Again, why? Democrats may be operating under the misguided notion that these proposals are “too far left” for voters, which polling tells us is wrong. It may also feel that it no longer needs to appease its own left flank, which is probably true. But even if the party’s internal left has fallen in line behind its leaders, key voting blocs still need and want more than this platform offers.

The race is still close. Democrats are less likely to win it with a platform that reflects the politics of caution—which, for voters, means the soft despair of the status quo.

That’s the end of commentary. What follows is a list of policy differences between the 2020 and 2024 platforms, together with public opinion polling on each policy area.

Health Insurance: The “Public Option”

The 2020 document offered a proposal for the so-called “public option.” While it fell short of full health reform, it was ambitious in today’s political context. The section, entitled “Securing Universal Healthcare Through a Public Option,” included the following text:

Private insurers need real competition to ensure they have incentive to provide affordable, quality coverage to every American. To achieve that objective, we will give all Americans the choice to select a high-quality, affordable public option through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. (Emphasis mine.)

It goes on to say:

The public option will provide at least one plan choice without deductibles; will be administered by CMS, not private companies; and will cover all primary care without any co-payments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals, just like Medicare does on behalf of older people. Everyone will be eligible to choose the public option or another Affordable Care Act marketplace plan...

That’s not Medicare For All, but it’s genuinely progressive. This public option plan also provided coverage for low-income Americans in states whose Republican governors had refused to expand Medicaid. Significantly, it would also have allowed people to enroll in Medicare (rather than employer-provided plans or other coverage) at age 60, rather than waiting until they reach the current eligibility age of 65.

What does the 2024 platform say about the public option? Nothing. The phrase doesn’t appear anywhere, and neither do these proposals. (According to a quote-tracking service, President Biden stopped using the phrase “public option” the month after he was elected.)

Public Opinion

Healthcare costs were the third-highest concern of American voters, according to recent polling, with 57% of those polled saying these costs are “a very big problem” and only 2% saying they were not a problem at all. The 2020 proposal would have helped address those concerns.

Drug Prices

Democrats included a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allowing Medicare to negotiate prices on a limited list of medications. While that provision was cut back significantly during congressional negotiations, it was a step forward. The IRA also permits Medicare to demand reimbursement when pharmaceutical corporations raise prices faster than overall inflation. It will also cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors, beginning next year, albeit at a level that’s still onerous for some.

These are all positive, if incremental, steps. But activists disappointed by the final bill’s limitations were told that this was only the beginning and that more action was coming. Not so, according to the 2024 platform.

The 2020 platform proposed empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices “for all public and private purchasers—for families and businesses, as well as older Americans—no matter where they get their coverage.” It pledged to “prevent the price of (all) brand-name and outlier generic drugs from rising faster than the inflation rate,” and to ensure that treatment for chronic health conditions would be available “at little or no cost.”

All these 2020 proposals would have expanded the IRA’s cost provisions and extended them to everyone, including people on private insurance. All of them—enabling Medicare negotiate drug prices for everyone, limiting price hikes on brand-name and some generic drugs for everyone, and low- or no-cost access to chronic health treatments for everyone—are missing from the 2024 platform.

Public Opinion

Again, this runs against public opinion. A June poll found that expanding the IRA’s prescriptions drug provisions—negotiating lower prices, applying the $2,000 out-of-pocket cost cap to people with private insurance, and capping the cost of insulin and inhalers for all Americans—was supported by a staggering 84% of voters.

Labor Rights

The 2020 platform called for strengthening whistleblower and anti-retaliation protections for workers, and for reining in non-compete clauses, mandatory arbitration, and no-poaching agreements. The 2024 platform cites the administration’s work on non-competes and mandatory arbitration, but doesn’t mention whistleblowers or anti-retaliation protections.

The 2020 platform also supported the right to organize through majority sign-up (“card checks”) and advocated a ban on “captive audience” employee meetings. Neither is mentioned in the 2024 platform.

The 2020 platform said, “We will hold executives personally accountable if they interfere in workers’ efforts to organize, including issuing criminal penalties for intentional obstruction.” This language is missing from 2024’s platform.

In 2020, Democrats called for changing labor law “so that it is easier for unions and employers to enter into multi-employer agreements establishing minimum workplace standards related to wages, benefits, and working conditions.” This language is also absent in 2020.

Public Opinion

Roughly 7 out of 10 Americans approve of labor unions.

Social Security

The 2020 platform said this about Social Security:

We will enact policies to make Social Security more progressive, including increasing benefits for all beneficiaries, meaningfully increasing minimum benefit payments, increasing benefits for long-duration beneficiaries, and protecting surviving spouses from benefit cuts.

The 2020 document also noted an important and under-recognized aspect of the retirement crisis: the struggle of unpaid caregivers, most of whom are women, to survive in their senior years. It correctly noted that these family members “sacrifice not only wages but Social Security benefits when they swap paid labor for unpaid care work,” and called for changes that would recognize this disparity and correct it.

By contrast, the 2024 document only says this about benefits: “We’ll strengthen the program and expand benefits by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.”

No specifics are provided and unpaid caregivers are not mentioned.

Public Opinion

Polling shows that majorities in key voting blocs—Black, Hispanic, lower-income, and under-30—support expanding Social Security benefits.

Poverty

The 2020 platform included a section called “Ending Poverty”; in 2024, it’s called “Fighting Poverty.” That seems like a subtle downsizing of expectations.

The 2020 document made this important observation:

We recognize that the official poverty rate, as measured and communicated by the federal government, fails to capture critical needs like housing, education, healthcare, transportation, energy, and other necessities, and therefore understates the true share of Americans living in poverty.

The 2024 platform leaves that language out and says instead, “Some 40 million Americans still live in poverty.” That’s the official rate—the one that, as the 2020 platform correctly observed, undercounts the “the true number of Americans living in poverty.”

But undercounting the poor isn’t the new platform’s only step backward. The 2020 platform proposed using the “10-20-30” funding approach, which would direct “at least 10% of federal funding to communities where 20% or more of the population has been living below the poverty line for 30 years or longer.”

The new document doesn’t include any specific funding proposal. (Wisely, it does propose restoring the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.)

Public Opinion

While support for anti-poverty efforts has declined, a plurality of voters thinks government “should provide more assistance to people in need.” That includes majorities of younger, Black, and Democratic voters.

Taxes

Like its predecessor, the 2024 platform proposes raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations while closing loopholes. Unfortunately, it also uses this unfortunate yet popular political catchphrase: “A hedge fund manager or CEO should never pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or firefighter.”

While that’s self-evidently true, each repetition of this so-called “Buffett rule” subtly lowers public expectations about progressive taxation. It sounds reasonable until you think about it for a second: In a just world, would teachers and billionaires really pay the same percentage of their income in taxes? Of course not. Most people would agree that billionaires should contribute a higher percentage; this rhetoric lowers expectations.

And speaking of billionaires: The 2020 platform pledged to restore the estate tax “back to the historical norm,” before Trump and the Republicans reduced the burden on multimillionaire heirs. “Historial norm” presumably means a return to something like the levels in 2007-2008, when the minimum taxable inheritance was $2 million and the maximum tax rate was 45%.

The 2020 platform, however, says nothing about the estate tax.

Public Opinion

Polling shows that 69% of swing-state voters support raising taxes on people earning $400,000 and above, while 77% of swing-state voters support raising taxes on billionaires to support Social Security.

Wall Street

The 2024 document includes a section on “Corporate Greed” but is light on new proposals. That’s odd, since the Biden administration’s work on monopolization is one of its strongest achievements. 2024’s platform does call for an updated version of the Glass-Steagall Act, as the 2020 document did. But the 2020 document included an entire section called “Curbing Wall Street Abuses,” which declared:

Financial institutions should never be “too big to fail.”

... when justified by the law, we will back criminal penalties for reckless executives who illegally gamble with the savings and economic security of their clients and American communities.

...creat(e) a public credit reporting agency to provide a non-discriminatory credit reporting alternative to the private agencies, and... require its use by all federal lending programs, including home lending and student loans.

We will also give bankruptcy judges the authority to “cram down,” or modify, mortgages for primary residences during bankruptcy proceedings, so working families can benefit from the same debt relief tools currently available to those who own assets like vacation homes and yachts.

None of these ideas appears in the 2024 platform.

Public Opinion

A scant 10% of Americans in a 2023 poll expressed a great deal of confidence in U.S. banks, while nearly two-thirds said the government is doing an “inadequate” job of regulating them.

Minimum Wage

Both the 2020 and 2024 platforms call for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. It should be noted, however, that inflation has seriously eroded the value of a $15 wage. If they want to be consistent, Democrats should propose between $17.75 and $18 an hour.

As it is, they’ve already lowered their proposed minimum wage by 16-18% in real-dollar terms.

Public Opinion

An April 2024 poll found that 64% of voters supported raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour, including 85% of Democrats, 65% of Independents and 45% of Republicans.