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"Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later" evaluates how well the Democratic Party has done in charting a new course since the autumn of 2017. (Photo: Democraticautopsy.org)
In October 2017, a team of progressive researchers published "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis," which probed the causes of the disastrous 2016 election defeat. The report came in the wake of the party leadership's failure to do its own autopsy. In a cover story for The Nation, William Greider wrote that the "Autopsy" is "an unemotional dissection of why the Democrats failed so miserably, and it warns that the party must change profoundly or else remain a loser."
Now, "Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later" evaluates how well the Democratic Party has done in charting a new course since the autumn of 2017. This report rates developments in each of the seven categories that the original report assessed.
The upsurge of progressive activism and electoral victories during the last year has created momentum that could lead to historic breakthroughs in the midterm elections and far beyond. Realizing such potential will require transforming and energizing the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party. In 2017 and early summer 2018, the Democratic National Committee voted to refuse donations from a handful of toxic industries that contradict the party's platform--though the ban on fossil-fuel money was effectively repealed in August 2018. Meanwhile, the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee continue to freely take big corporate donations.
A test for Democrats on Capitol Hill came this year when the GOP successfully worked with powerful bank lobbyists to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act (under the guise of helping small community banks). More than one-third of Senate Democrats joined the effort; many were recipients of significant banking donations. In the House, 33 Democrats joined most Republicans to pass the measure; journalist David Dayen reported that nearly all of the 33 identify as corporate "New Democrats."
In September, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi preemptively boxed in any potential left-populist agenda on Capitol Hill by backing reinstatement of a "pay-go" rule to offset all new spending with tax increases or budget cuts. A former legislative director for three Democrats in Congress, Justin Talbot-Zorn, responded with an article for The Nation pointing out that "bold progressivism and 'pay-go' fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive." He added: "The existential challenge of climate change demands that we fully overhaul our energy and transportation infrastructure in a short period of time. The issues of America's rising inequality and frayed social contract--including stagnant wages, unaffordable college, and exorbitant health care can only be fixed with major new investments."
After writing a recent analysis for The Guardian that looked at how Democratic leaders act on economic issues in states (from California to Connecticut) that they politically control, David Sirota put his conclusions in a tweet: Democrats in blue states "have used their power to block single payer & a public option, enrich Wall St, subsidize corporations, slash pensions, lay off teachers, promote fracking & engage in pay to play corruption."
For the Democratic Party, a crucial disconnect remains between rhetoric about corporate influence and subservience to it.
In the summer of 2018, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez told a predominantly black audience: "We lost elections not only in November 2016, but we lost elections in the run-up because we stopped organizing.... We took too many people for granted, and African Americans--our most loyal constituency--we all too frequently took for granted. That is a shame on us, folks, and for that I apologize. And for that I say, it will never happen again!"
During the last 12 months, voters of color have been key to notable electoral wins. But the party has a long way to go to fulfill Perez's promise.
In the November 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, Democrat Ralph Northam "won three-quarters of the votes overall" in racial-minority neighborhoods, The Washington Post reported. "Margins grew by 10 percent in Hispanic neighborhoods." Black voters turned out in higher numbers than they had before. Unfortunately, Northam's campaign spending priorities were distressingly similar to the party's 2016 behavior. Groups like BlackPAC and New Virginia Majority handled essential local black organizing, but had a difficult time securing adequate resources.
Alabama's special election for a Senate seat tells a similar, slightly more encouraging story. Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore, a man accused of pedophilia and with a history of racist remarks. Jones won 96 percent of the black vote, accounting for 29 percent of total votes cast--more than the state's 27 percent black population. BlackPAC and other groups, including local NAACP chapters, organized and knocked on more than 500,000 doors with a tailored message addressing criminal-justice reform, education, and health care. The DNC also contributed to operations, spending around $1 million on engaging black and millennial voters. Jones, like Northam, spent big on advertising aimed at white voters.
Donald Trump's assault on immigrants has mobilized some in the party to be stronger on immigrants' rights. Yet congressional Democrats were seen as having sold out Dreamers in their budget negotiations with Republicans. An April 2018 poll found that, while 40 percent of Hispanics believe Democrats care about Dreamers, 54 percent believe they're "using this issue for political gain."
Likewise, the Democratic Party must do much more to reform the police and justice systems. Eighty percent of Democrats want reform and 87 percent want to decrease the prison population. Running for Philadelphia district attorney as a comprehensive reformer, Larry Krasner showed that these desires for change could be mobilized into a winning campaign; turnout for his November 2017 election was much higher than in previous DA elections. Krasner went on to implement policies such as dropping marijuana charges and dismissing problematic prosecutors in the DA's office.
Such policy approaches, coupled with grassroots organizing, enabled police accountability advocate Randall Woodfin to win the Birmingham, Alabama, mayoral race in 2017 and enabled progressive Democrat Earnell Lucas to win the race for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff in August 2018. These campaigns suggest a path forward for Democratic candidates--where the priority is to inspire voters and maximize turnout rather than to woo "persuadable" Republicans.
The Democratic Party still isn't offering a bold vision that can excite young adults, a demographic known for not voting much. Looking to the 2018 midterms, the party put out its "Better Deal for Our Democracy" platform. This is a modest step forward--especially the "Crack Down on Corporate Monopolies" provisions--but missing is a focus on the bread-and-butter issues that can materially affect young people's lives, such as redirecting resources from our bloated military toward popular programs for free college education and Medicare for All.
Young people, more than their older counterparts, are increasingly against obscene military budgets and U.S. wars. But citizens with those views are without powerful representation in Washington. Sixty-eight percent of House Democrats and 85 percent of Democratic senators voted for the record-breaking 2019 military budget of over $700 billion, including expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
On the issue of paying for college, party leaders have made a bit of progress. But instead of taking a clear stance in favor of free public college tuition--something a strong majority of Democrats support--congressional Democrats proposed a law in July that would subsidize community colleges only and work to "make college more affordable by reducing debt and simplifying financial aid," as The Washington Post reported. It's a tepid approach.
Like a growing number of successful candidates for local and state offices as well as congressional seats, most Democratic presidential contenders for 2020 have learned to push some compelling, simple policy measures. But the Democratic leadership is still using a 1990s-era playbook of technocratic half-measures that don't inspire--or bring out to the polls--America's youth.
The depressed turnout that cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election was due to both voter suppression efforts by Republicans and the Democratic Party's own inability to mobilize its base. The party has made some progress on both counts.
To diminish turnout, GOP strategists keep targeting people of color, the young, and others apt to cast ballots for Democrats. The DNC's response has grown more robust in the past year, with the creation of the "IWillVote" program to register new voters and fight voter suppression. The initiative has provided grants in 41 states and territories, aiming to reach 50 million voters by November.
The party has also supported restoring felons' right to vote. In April, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to restore suffrage to felons on parole. In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and party leaders are supporting a ballot measure to restore felons' voting rights.
Meanwhile, automatically registering everyone to vote has emerged as a popular and practical way to address discriminatory voter restrictions. In 2018, eight states and the District of Columbia approved or began implementing automatic voter registration. These laws were virtually nonexistent three years ago, but now 13 states and D.C. have them.
Yet most party leaders have remained hesitant to promote other clearly popular policies. And voters in marginalized communities often see scant difference between the two major parties. The Democratic Party could dramatically boost voter participation by mobilizing around progressive proposals that are broadly popular, such as higher taxes on the wealthy, Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, stronger environmental protections, public transportation, and criminal-justice reform.
The Democratic Party routinely fails to take full electoral advantage of such public opinion--a major factor in its fundamental lack of credibility with voters. A Quinnipiac poll in March 2018 showed just 31 percent of the country had a positive view of Democrats--down from 37 percent four months earlier and 44 percent a year earlier, according to CNN polls. Voter turnout falls short when many are left doubting that the Democratic Party will make good on its progressive rhetoric.
From the party-platform struggles of 2016 through the "Summer for Progress" coalition convened by Our Revolution in the summer of 2017, the DNC seemed tone-deaf to the policy demands of its base. When Summer for Progress activists marched to DNC headquarters in Washington, they were met outside the front door by barricades.
But since mid-2017, many party leaders have been pulled along by the grassroots. The House of Representatives recently saw the formation of a Medicare for All caucus, with at least 70 members. Even ex-President Obama recently got on board. A year ago, a Vox headline summed up the momentum: "The stunning Democratic shift on single-payer: In 2008, no leading Democratic presidential candidate backed single-payer. In 2020, all of them might."
Student survivors of the mass shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became leaders of an intense new push for gun control. Within six weeks, the #NeverAgain movement helped organize the March for Our Lives in Washington--with 800 solidarity events across the country--and a national voter-registration drive. Though most congressional Democrats had been avoiding or downplaying the gun-control issue, it became hard to ignore this youth movement.
Another youth-energized groundswell, the climate-justice movement, was dealt a slap in the face by the DNC's reversal on accepting donations from the fossil-fuel industry. A 350.org co-founder said: "This sort of spineless corporate pandering is why Democrats keep losing."
This has been a banner year for successful primary campaigns by progressive Democrats nationwide allied with organizations such as Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, People's Action, Democracy for America, Citizen Action, Working Families Party and Progressive Democrats of America, to name just a few groups that knocked on doors and e-mail inboxes all year. In New York State, there was the defeat of powerhouse Representative Joe Crowley by 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then a progressive deluge that unseated six "Independent Democratic" state senators--corporatists allied with the GOP and Democratic Governor Cuomo. If there's a "blue wave" in November, much of the credit will belong to grassroots groups.
How did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee react to this grassroots energy? Often by intervening on behalf of establishment primary candidates against progressives, as in Colorado's sixth district and in Texas's seventh district (where the DCCC publicly attacked progressive candidate Laura Moser). Social movements have the ability to energize the Democratic Party, but not if blocked by party leaders.
Chants of "No More War" from delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention gave voice to sentiments that still resonate through the party's base and the broader U.S. public, notably in communities with higher rates of military sacrifice. While Trump's 2016 victories in swing states may have been aided by his posing as a foe of protracted war, his administration's Middle East policies have exposed that masquerade. Unfortunately, the positions of Democratic leaders on endless war and military spending offer little alternative.
Few Democrats in Congress are willing to strongly challenge the unaccountable military budget, which soaks up most discretionary spending that could be redirected toward the party's proclaimed domestic agenda. During federal-budget negotiations early this year--with Trump requesting a huge Pentagon-budget increase--Nancy Pelosi boasted in an e-mail to House Democrats: "In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense." The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer declared: "We fully support President Trump's Defense Department's request." Months later, an overwhelming majority of House and Senate Democrats supported the massive 2019 "National Defense Authorization Act" of $716 billion.
Trump has a dangerous admiration for authoritarian leaders. Democrats need to condemn such admiration without succumbing to reckless bellicosity.
The United States and Russia possess 93 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. Yet many Democratic leaders seem oblivious to the threat of armed conflict with Russia--a peril profoundly understood by Democratic presidents during the height of the Cold War. Reacting to evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, numerous Democrats engaged in extreme rhetoric, calling it an "act of war" and "equivalent" to Pearl Harbor. Democratic leaders have rarely acknowledged the crucial need for "a shift in approach toward Russia" including "steps to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers," in the words of an open letter calling for "Election Security and True National Security," released this summer.
On matters of war and peace--for instance, the 17-year war in Afghanistan and the Trump team's extremely one-sided Israel-Palestine policy--top Democrats have offered few alternative policies. They've made scant objections to Trump administration actions that a director at Amnesty International USA, Daphne Eviatar, has described as "hugely expanding the use of drone and airstrikes, including outside of war zones, and increasing civilian casualties in the process."
The party leadership has routinely been absent in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen caused primarily by the U.S.-backed Saudi war. In March, Bernie Sanders, Democrat Chris Murphy, and Republican Mike Lee forced a vote on their Senate resolution to end U.S. military support for the Saudis in Yemen. In the face of White House opposition and indifference among Democratic leaders, it went down to defeat (55-44) thanks to ten Democratic "no" votes. With the disaster continuing to worsen in Yemen, the House Democratic leadership reportedly dragged its feet while progressive first-term Congressman Ro Khanna persistently led a bipartisan effort to get a vote on a similar measure; finally, in late September, Khanna was able to introduce the resolution with some high-level party support.
Democrats often denounce the GOP for immoral and extremist domestic policies favoring the powerful. The party's failure to challenge such foreign policies is a moral and political tragedy.
Efforts to democratize the Democratic Party made some progress in August 2018 when the full DNC voted to bar superdelegates from voting for the presidential nominee on the first ballot. This reduction in the power of superdelegates grew out of anger among Bernie Sanders supporters about DNC favoritism for Hillary Clinton. In the end, the reform passed with much support from the Clinton wing of the party and a major assist from DNC chair Tom Perez.
Contrary to claims made by superdelegate defenders, the reform moved toward greater racial diversity at the national convention. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 20 percent of superdelegates were black and about 36 percent were people of color; numbers provided by the Hillary Clinton campaign showed that convention delegates as a whole were more diverse than superdelegates--25 percent black and 50 percent people of color.
The DNC'S encouraging action on superdelegate reform contrasts sharply with the DNC's failure to act on a proposal by its Unity Reform Commission to establish a Financial Oversight Committee that would present an annual report on the DNC budget to the entire DNC, so that it could assess the effectiveness of expenditures and staff, as required by the DNC's Bylaws. The current Finance Committee--entirely appointed by the DNC chair--conducts no such evaluations. A Financial Oversight Committee could help achieve what the DNC still lacks: transparency and accountability in how DNC money is spent.
To get closer to living up to its name, the Democratic Party should rely on a broad base of small donors and refuse donations from corporations, particularly those with interests adverse to the party's platform. The DNC's reversal of its ban on fossil-fuel donations was a step backward.
This summer, the DNC voted in reforms to promote more openness and accessibility in presidential primaries and caucuses. The reforms urge state parties to work with their state government to combat voter suppression and implement measures such as same-day party switching and same-day registration. An extreme example of antidemocratic obstacles is in the state of New York, where voters must declare their party affiliation more than six months in advance.
Barriers to democracy inside the Democratic Party have obstructed efforts to make the party a powerful vehicle for progressive change. During the last year, grassroots pressure has reduced some of those barriers. Looking ahead, a truly democratic Democratic Party could profoundly revitalize the politics of our country.
This excerpt was originally published in The Nation. The full report is available here.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in paperback with a new afterword about the Gaza war in autumn 2024.
In October 2017, a team of progressive researchers published "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis," which probed the causes of the disastrous 2016 election defeat. The report came in the wake of the party leadership's failure to do its own autopsy. In a cover story for The Nation, William Greider wrote that the "Autopsy" is "an unemotional dissection of why the Democrats failed so miserably, and it warns that the party must change profoundly or else remain a loser."
Now, "Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later" evaluates how well the Democratic Party has done in charting a new course since the autumn of 2017. This report rates developments in each of the seven categories that the original report assessed.
The upsurge of progressive activism and electoral victories during the last year has created momentum that could lead to historic breakthroughs in the midterm elections and far beyond. Realizing such potential will require transforming and energizing the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party. In 2017 and early summer 2018, the Democratic National Committee voted to refuse donations from a handful of toxic industries that contradict the party's platform--though the ban on fossil-fuel money was effectively repealed in August 2018. Meanwhile, the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee continue to freely take big corporate donations.
A test for Democrats on Capitol Hill came this year when the GOP successfully worked with powerful bank lobbyists to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act (under the guise of helping small community banks). More than one-third of Senate Democrats joined the effort; many were recipients of significant banking donations. In the House, 33 Democrats joined most Republicans to pass the measure; journalist David Dayen reported that nearly all of the 33 identify as corporate "New Democrats."
In September, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi preemptively boxed in any potential left-populist agenda on Capitol Hill by backing reinstatement of a "pay-go" rule to offset all new spending with tax increases or budget cuts. A former legislative director for three Democrats in Congress, Justin Talbot-Zorn, responded with an article for The Nation pointing out that "bold progressivism and 'pay-go' fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive." He added: "The existential challenge of climate change demands that we fully overhaul our energy and transportation infrastructure in a short period of time. The issues of America's rising inequality and frayed social contract--including stagnant wages, unaffordable college, and exorbitant health care can only be fixed with major new investments."
After writing a recent analysis for The Guardian that looked at how Democratic leaders act on economic issues in states (from California to Connecticut) that they politically control, David Sirota put his conclusions in a tweet: Democrats in blue states "have used their power to block single payer & a public option, enrich Wall St, subsidize corporations, slash pensions, lay off teachers, promote fracking & engage in pay to play corruption."
For the Democratic Party, a crucial disconnect remains between rhetoric about corporate influence and subservience to it.
In the summer of 2018, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez told a predominantly black audience: "We lost elections not only in November 2016, but we lost elections in the run-up because we stopped organizing.... We took too many people for granted, and African Americans--our most loyal constituency--we all too frequently took for granted. That is a shame on us, folks, and for that I apologize. And for that I say, it will never happen again!"
During the last 12 months, voters of color have been key to notable electoral wins. But the party has a long way to go to fulfill Perez's promise.
In the November 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, Democrat Ralph Northam "won three-quarters of the votes overall" in racial-minority neighborhoods, The Washington Post reported. "Margins grew by 10 percent in Hispanic neighborhoods." Black voters turned out in higher numbers than they had before. Unfortunately, Northam's campaign spending priorities were distressingly similar to the party's 2016 behavior. Groups like BlackPAC and New Virginia Majority handled essential local black organizing, but had a difficult time securing adequate resources.
Alabama's special election for a Senate seat tells a similar, slightly more encouraging story. Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore, a man accused of pedophilia and with a history of racist remarks. Jones won 96 percent of the black vote, accounting for 29 percent of total votes cast--more than the state's 27 percent black population. BlackPAC and other groups, including local NAACP chapters, organized and knocked on more than 500,000 doors with a tailored message addressing criminal-justice reform, education, and health care. The DNC also contributed to operations, spending around $1 million on engaging black and millennial voters. Jones, like Northam, spent big on advertising aimed at white voters.
Donald Trump's assault on immigrants has mobilized some in the party to be stronger on immigrants' rights. Yet congressional Democrats were seen as having sold out Dreamers in their budget negotiations with Republicans. An April 2018 poll found that, while 40 percent of Hispanics believe Democrats care about Dreamers, 54 percent believe they're "using this issue for political gain."
Likewise, the Democratic Party must do much more to reform the police and justice systems. Eighty percent of Democrats want reform and 87 percent want to decrease the prison population. Running for Philadelphia district attorney as a comprehensive reformer, Larry Krasner showed that these desires for change could be mobilized into a winning campaign; turnout for his November 2017 election was much higher than in previous DA elections. Krasner went on to implement policies such as dropping marijuana charges and dismissing problematic prosecutors in the DA's office.
Such policy approaches, coupled with grassroots organizing, enabled police accountability advocate Randall Woodfin to win the Birmingham, Alabama, mayoral race in 2017 and enabled progressive Democrat Earnell Lucas to win the race for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff in August 2018. These campaigns suggest a path forward for Democratic candidates--where the priority is to inspire voters and maximize turnout rather than to woo "persuadable" Republicans.
The Democratic Party still isn't offering a bold vision that can excite young adults, a demographic known for not voting much. Looking to the 2018 midterms, the party put out its "Better Deal for Our Democracy" platform. This is a modest step forward--especially the "Crack Down on Corporate Monopolies" provisions--but missing is a focus on the bread-and-butter issues that can materially affect young people's lives, such as redirecting resources from our bloated military toward popular programs for free college education and Medicare for All.
Young people, more than their older counterparts, are increasingly against obscene military budgets and U.S. wars. But citizens with those views are without powerful representation in Washington. Sixty-eight percent of House Democrats and 85 percent of Democratic senators voted for the record-breaking 2019 military budget of over $700 billion, including expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
On the issue of paying for college, party leaders have made a bit of progress. But instead of taking a clear stance in favor of free public college tuition--something a strong majority of Democrats support--congressional Democrats proposed a law in July that would subsidize community colleges only and work to "make college more affordable by reducing debt and simplifying financial aid," as The Washington Post reported. It's a tepid approach.
Like a growing number of successful candidates for local and state offices as well as congressional seats, most Democratic presidential contenders for 2020 have learned to push some compelling, simple policy measures. But the Democratic leadership is still using a 1990s-era playbook of technocratic half-measures that don't inspire--or bring out to the polls--America's youth.
The depressed turnout that cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election was due to both voter suppression efforts by Republicans and the Democratic Party's own inability to mobilize its base. The party has made some progress on both counts.
To diminish turnout, GOP strategists keep targeting people of color, the young, and others apt to cast ballots for Democrats. The DNC's response has grown more robust in the past year, with the creation of the "IWillVote" program to register new voters and fight voter suppression. The initiative has provided grants in 41 states and territories, aiming to reach 50 million voters by November.
The party has also supported restoring felons' right to vote. In April, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to restore suffrage to felons on parole. In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and party leaders are supporting a ballot measure to restore felons' voting rights.
Meanwhile, automatically registering everyone to vote has emerged as a popular and practical way to address discriminatory voter restrictions. In 2018, eight states and the District of Columbia approved or began implementing automatic voter registration. These laws were virtually nonexistent three years ago, but now 13 states and D.C. have them.
Yet most party leaders have remained hesitant to promote other clearly popular policies. And voters in marginalized communities often see scant difference between the two major parties. The Democratic Party could dramatically boost voter participation by mobilizing around progressive proposals that are broadly popular, such as higher taxes on the wealthy, Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, stronger environmental protections, public transportation, and criminal-justice reform.
The Democratic Party routinely fails to take full electoral advantage of such public opinion--a major factor in its fundamental lack of credibility with voters. A Quinnipiac poll in March 2018 showed just 31 percent of the country had a positive view of Democrats--down from 37 percent four months earlier and 44 percent a year earlier, according to CNN polls. Voter turnout falls short when many are left doubting that the Democratic Party will make good on its progressive rhetoric.
From the party-platform struggles of 2016 through the "Summer for Progress" coalition convened by Our Revolution in the summer of 2017, the DNC seemed tone-deaf to the policy demands of its base. When Summer for Progress activists marched to DNC headquarters in Washington, they were met outside the front door by barricades.
But since mid-2017, many party leaders have been pulled along by the grassroots. The House of Representatives recently saw the formation of a Medicare for All caucus, with at least 70 members. Even ex-President Obama recently got on board. A year ago, a Vox headline summed up the momentum: "The stunning Democratic shift on single-payer: In 2008, no leading Democratic presidential candidate backed single-payer. In 2020, all of them might."
Student survivors of the mass shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became leaders of an intense new push for gun control. Within six weeks, the #NeverAgain movement helped organize the March for Our Lives in Washington--with 800 solidarity events across the country--and a national voter-registration drive. Though most congressional Democrats had been avoiding or downplaying the gun-control issue, it became hard to ignore this youth movement.
Another youth-energized groundswell, the climate-justice movement, was dealt a slap in the face by the DNC's reversal on accepting donations from the fossil-fuel industry. A 350.org co-founder said: "This sort of spineless corporate pandering is why Democrats keep losing."
This has been a banner year for successful primary campaigns by progressive Democrats nationwide allied with organizations such as Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, People's Action, Democracy for America, Citizen Action, Working Families Party and Progressive Democrats of America, to name just a few groups that knocked on doors and e-mail inboxes all year. In New York State, there was the defeat of powerhouse Representative Joe Crowley by 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then a progressive deluge that unseated six "Independent Democratic" state senators--corporatists allied with the GOP and Democratic Governor Cuomo. If there's a "blue wave" in November, much of the credit will belong to grassroots groups.
How did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee react to this grassroots energy? Often by intervening on behalf of establishment primary candidates against progressives, as in Colorado's sixth district and in Texas's seventh district (where the DCCC publicly attacked progressive candidate Laura Moser). Social movements have the ability to energize the Democratic Party, but not if blocked by party leaders.
Chants of "No More War" from delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention gave voice to sentiments that still resonate through the party's base and the broader U.S. public, notably in communities with higher rates of military sacrifice. While Trump's 2016 victories in swing states may have been aided by his posing as a foe of protracted war, his administration's Middle East policies have exposed that masquerade. Unfortunately, the positions of Democratic leaders on endless war and military spending offer little alternative.
Few Democrats in Congress are willing to strongly challenge the unaccountable military budget, which soaks up most discretionary spending that could be redirected toward the party's proclaimed domestic agenda. During federal-budget negotiations early this year--with Trump requesting a huge Pentagon-budget increase--Nancy Pelosi boasted in an e-mail to House Democrats: "In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense." The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer declared: "We fully support President Trump's Defense Department's request." Months later, an overwhelming majority of House and Senate Democrats supported the massive 2019 "National Defense Authorization Act" of $716 billion.
Trump has a dangerous admiration for authoritarian leaders. Democrats need to condemn such admiration without succumbing to reckless bellicosity.
The United States and Russia possess 93 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. Yet many Democratic leaders seem oblivious to the threat of armed conflict with Russia--a peril profoundly understood by Democratic presidents during the height of the Cold War. Reacting to evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, numerous Democrats engaged in extreme rhetoric, calling it an "act of war" and "equivalent" to Pearl Harbor. Democratic leaders have rarely acknowledged the crucial need for "a shift in approach toward Russia" including "steps to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers," in the words of an open letter calling for "Election Security and True National Security," released this summer.
On matters of war and peace--for instance, the 17-year war in Afghanistan and the Trump team's extremely one-sided Israel-Palestine policy--top Democrats have offered few alternative policies. They've made scant objections to Trump administration actions that a director at Amnesty International USA, Daphne Eviatar, has described as "hugely expanding the use of drone and airstrikes, including outside of war zones, and increasing civilian casualties in the process."
The party leadership has routinely been absent in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen caused primarily by the U.S.-backed Saudi war. In March, Bernie Sanders, Democrat Chris Murphy, and Republican Mike Lee forced a vote on their Senate resolution to end U.S. military support for the Saudis in Yemen. In the face of White House opposition and indifference among Democratic leaders, it went down to defeat (55-44) thanks to ten Democratic "no" votes. With the disaster continuing to worsen in Yemen, the House Democratic leadership reportedly dragged its feet while progressive first-term Congressman Ro Khanna persistently led a bipartisan effort to get a vote on a similar measure; finally, in late September, Khanna was able to introduce the resolution with some high-level party support.
Democrats often denounce the GOP for immoral and extremist domestic policies favoring the powerful. The party's failure to challenge such foreign policies is a moral and political tragedy.
Efforts to democratize the Democratic Party made some progress in August 2018 when the full DNC voted to bar superdelegates from voting for the presidential nominee on the first ballot. This reduction in the power of superdelegates grew out of anger among Bernie Sanders supporters about DNC favoritism for Hillary Clinton. In the end, the reform passed with much support from the Clinton wing of the party and a major assist from DNC chair Tom Perez.
Contrary to claims made by superdelegate defenders, the reform moved toward greater racial diversity at the national convention. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 20 percent of superdelegates were black and about 36 percent were people of color; numbers provided by the Hillary Clinton campaign showed that convention delegates as a whole were more diverse than superdelegates--25 percent black and 50 percent people of color.
The DNC'S encouraging action on superdelegate reform contrasts sharply with the DNC's failure to act on a proposal by its Unity Reform Commission to establish a Financial Oversight Committee that would present an annual report on the DNC budget to the entire DNC, so that it could assess the effectiveness of expenditures and staff, as required by the DNC's Bylaws. The current Finance Committee--entirely appointed by the DNC chair--conducts no such evaluations. A Financial Oversight Committee could help achieve what the DNC still lacks: transparency and accountability in how DNC money is spent.
To get closer to living up to its name, the Democratic Party should rely on a broad base of small donors and refuse donations from corporations, particularly those with interests adverse to the party's platform. The DNC's reversal of its ban on fossil-fuel donations was a step backward.
This summer, the DNC voted in reforms to promote more openness and accessibility in presidential primaries and caucuses. The reforms urge state parties to work with their state government to combat voter suppression and implement measures such as same-day party switching and same-day registration. An extreme example of antidemocratic obstacles is in the state of New York, where voters must declare their party affiliation more than six months in advance.
Barriers to democracy inside the Democratic Party have obstructed efforts to make the party a powerful vehicle for progressive change. During the last year, grassroots pressure has reduced some of those barriers. Looking ahead, a truly democratic Democratic Party could profoundly revitalize the politics of our country.
This excerpt was originally published in The Nation. The full report is available here.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in paperback with a new afterword about the Gaza war in autumn 2024.
In October 2017, a team of progressive researchers published "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis," which probed the causes of the disastrous 2016 election defeat. The report came in the wake of the party leadership's failure to do its own autopsy. In a cover story for The Nation, William Greider wrote that the "Autopsy" is "an unemotional dissection of why the Democrats failed so miserably, and it warns that the party must change profoundly or else remain a loser."
Now, "Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later" evaluates how well the Democratic Party has done in charting a new course since the autumn of 2017. This report rates developments in each of the seven categories that the original report assessed.
The upsurge of progressive activism and electoral victories during the last year has created momentum that could lead to historic breakthroughs in the midterm elections and far beyond. Realizing such potential will require transforming and energizing the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party. In 2017 and early summer 2018, the Democratic National Committee voted to refuse donations from a handful of toxic industries that contradict the party's platform--though the ban on fossil-fuel money was effectively repealed in August 2018. Meanwhile, the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee continue to freely take big corporate donations.
A test for Democrats on Capitol Hill came this year when the GOP successfully worked with powerful bank lobbyists to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act (under the guise of helping small community banks). More than one-third of Senate Democrats joined the effort; many were recipients of significant banking donations. In the House, 33 Democrats joined most Republicans to pass the measure; journalist David Dayen reported that nearly all of the 33 identify as corporate "New Democrats."
In September, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi preemptively boxed in any potential left-populist agenda on Capitol Hill by backing reinstatement of a "pay-go" rule to offset all new spending with tax increases or budget cuts. A former legislative director for three Democrats in Congress, Justin Talbot-Zorn, responded with an article for The Nation pointing out that "bold progressivism and 'pay-go' fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive." He added: "The existential challenge of climate change demands that we fully overhaul our energy and transportation infrastructure in a short period of time. The issues of America's rising inequality and frayed social contract--including stagnant wages, unaffordable college, and exorbitant health care can only be fixed with major new investments."
After writing a recent analysis for The Guardian that looked at how Democratic leaders act on economic issues in states (from California to Connecticut) that they politically control, David Sirota put his conclusions in a tweet: Democrats in blue states "have used their power to block single payer & a public option, enrich Wall St, subsidize corporations, slash pensions, lay off teachers, promote fracking & engage in pay to play corruption."
For the Democratic Party, a crucial disconnect remains between rhetoric about corporate influence and subservience to it.
In the summer of 2018, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez told a predominantly black audience: "We lost elections not only in November 2016, but we lost elections in the run-up because we stopped organizing.... We took too many people for granted, and African Americans--our most loyal constituency--we all too frequently took for granted. That is a shame on us, folks, and for that I apologize. And for that I say, it will never happen again!"
During the last 12 months, voters of color have been key to notable electoral wins. But the party has a long way to go to fulfill Perez's promise.
In the November 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, Democrat Ralph Northam "won three-quarters of the votes overall" in racial-minority neighborhoods, The Washington Post reported. "Margins grew by 10 percent in Hispanic neighborhoods." Black voters turned out in higher numbers than they had before. Unfortunately, Northam's campaign spending priorities were distressingly similar to the party's 2016 behavior. Groups like BlackPAC and New Virginia Majority handled essential local black organizing, but had a difficult time securing adequate resources.
Alabama's special election for a Senate seat tells a similar, slightly more encouraging story. Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore, a man accused of pedophilia and with a history of racist remarks. Jones won 96 percent of the black vote, accounting for 29 percent of total votes cast--more than the state's 27 percent black population. BlackPAC and other groups, including local NAACP chapters, organized and knocked on more than 500,000 doors with a tailored message addressing criminal-justice reform, education, and health care. The DNC also contributed to operations, spending around $1 million on engaging black and millennial voters. Jones, like Northam, spent big on advertising aimed at white voters.
Donald Trump's assault on immigrants has mobilized some in the party to be stronger on immigrants' rights. Yet congressional Democrats were seen as having sold out Dreamers in their budget negotiations with Republicans. An April 2018 poll found that, while 40 percent of Hispanics believe Democrats care about Dreamers, 54 percent believe they're "using this issue for political gain."
Likewise, the Democratic Party must do much more to reform the police and justice systems. Eighty percent of Democrats want reform and 87 percent want to decrease the prison population. Running for Philadelphia district attorney as a comprehensive reformer, Larry Krasner showed that these desires for change could be mobilized into a winning campaign; turnout for his November 2017 election was much higher than in previous DA elections. Krasner went on to implement policies such as dropping marijuana charges and dismissing problematic prosecutors in the DA's office.
Such policy approaches, coupled with grassroots organizing, enabled police accountability advocate Randall Woodfin to win the Birmingham, Alabama, mayoral race in 2017 and enabled progressive Democrat Earnell Lucas to win the race for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, sheriff in August 2018. These campaigns suggest a path forward for Democratic candidates--where the priority is to inspire voters and maximize turnout rather than to woo "persuadable" Republicans.
The Democratic Party still isn't offering a bold vision that can excite young adults, a demographic known for not voting much. Looking to the 2018 midterms, the party put out its "Better Deal for Our Democracy" platform. This is a modest step forward--especially the "Crack Down on Corporate Monopolies" provisions--but missing is a focus on the bread-and-butter issues that can materially affect young people's lives, such as redirecting resources from our bloated military toward popular programs for free college education and Medicare for All.
Young people, more than their older counterparts, are increasingly against obscene military budgets and U.S. wars. But citizens with those views are without powerful representation in Washington. Sixty-eight percent of House Democrats and 85 percent of Democratic senators voted for the record-breaking 2019 military budget of over $700 billion, including expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
On the issue of paying for college, party leaders have made a bit of progress. But instead of taking a clear stance in favor of free public college tuition--something a strong majority of Democrats support--congressional Democrats proposed a law in July that would subsidize community colleges only and work to "make college more affordable by reducing debt and simplifying financial aid," as The Washington Post reported. It's a tepid approach.
Like a growing number of successful candidates for local and state offices as well as congressional seats, most Democratic presidential contenders for 2020 have learned to push some compelling, simple policy measures. But the Democratic leadership is still using a 1990s-era playbook of technocratic half-measures that don't inspire--or bring out to the polls--America's youth.
The depressed turnout that cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election was due to both voter suppression efforts by Republicans and the Democratic Party's own inability to mobilize its base. The party has made some progress on both counts.
To diminish turnout, GOP strategists keep targeting people of color, the young, and others apt to cast ballots for Democrats. The DNC's response has grown more robust in the past year, with the creation of the "IWillVote" program to register new voters and fight voter suppression. The initiative has provided grants in 41 states and territories, aiming to reach 50 million voters by November.
The party has also supported restoring felons' right to vote. In April, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to restore suffrage to felons on parole. In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and party leaders are supporting a ballot measure to restore felons' voting rights.
Meanwhile, automatically registering everyone to vote has emerged as a popular and practical way to address discriminatory voter restrictions. In 2018, eight states and the District of Columbia approved or began implementing automatic voter registration. These laws were virtually nonexistent three years ago, but now 13 states and D.C. have them.
Yet most party leaders have remained hesitant to promote other clearly popular policies. And voters in marginalized communities often see scant difference between the two major parties. The Democratic Party could dramatically boost voter participation by mobilizing around progressive proposals that are broadly popular, such as higher taxes on the wealthy, Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, stronger environmental protections, public transportation, and criminal-justice reform.
The Democratic Party routinely fails to take full electoral advantage of such public opinion--a major factor in its fundamental lack of credibility with voters. A Quinnipiac poll in March 2018 showed just 31 percent of the country had a positive view of Democrats--down from 37 percent four months earlier and 44 percent a year earlier, according to CNN polls. Voter turnout falls short when many are left doubting that the Democratic Party will make good on its progressive rhetoric.
From the party-platform struggles of 2016 through the "Summer for Progress" coalition convened by Our Revolution in the summer of 2017, the DNC seemed tone-deaf to the policy demands of its base. When Summer for Progress activists marched to DNC headquarters in Washington, they were met outside the front door by barricades.
But since mid-2017, many party leaders have been pulled along by the grassroots. The House of Representatives recently saw the formation of a Medicare for All caucus, with at least 70 members. Even ex-President Obama recently got on board. A year ago, a Vox headline summed up the momentum: "The stunning Democratic shift on single-payer: In 2008, no leading Democratic presidential candidate backed single-payer. In 2020, all of them might."
Student survivors of the mass shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became leaders of an intense new push for gun control. Within six weeks, the #NeverAgain movement helped organize the March for Our Lives in Washington--with 800 solidarity events across the country--and a national voter-registration drive. Though most congressional Democrats had been avoiding or downplaying the gun-control issue, it became hard to ignore this youth movement.
Another youth-energized groundswell, the climate-justice movement, was dealt a slap in the face by the DNC's reversal on accepting donations from the fossil-fuel industry. A 350.org co-founder said: "This sort of spineless corporate pandering is why Democrats keep losing."
This has been a banner year for successful primary campaigns by progressive Democrats nationwide allied with organizations such as Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, People's Action, Democracy for America, Citizen Action, Working Families Party and Progressive Democrats of America, to name just a few groups that knocked on doors and e-mail inboxes all year. In New York State, there was the defeat of powerhouse Representative Joe Crowley by 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then a progressive deluge that unseated six "Independent Democratic" state senators--corporatists allied with the GOP and Democratic Governor Cuomo. If there's a "blue wave" in November, much of the credit will belong to grassroots groups.
How did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee react to this grassroots energy? Often by intervening on behalf of establishment primary candidates against progressives, as in Colorado's sixth district and in Texas's seventh district (where the DCCC publicly attacked progressive candidate Laura Moser). Social movements have the ability to energize the Democratic Party, but not if blocked by party leaders.
Chants of "No More War" from delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention gave voice to sentiments that still resonate through the party's base and the broader U.S. public, notably in communities with higher rates of military sacrifice. While Trump's 2016 victories in swing states may have been aided by his posing as a foe of protracted war, his administration's Middle East policies have exposed that masquerade. Unfortunately, the positions of Democratic leaders on endless war and military spending offer little alternative.
Few Democrats in Congress are willing to strongly challenge the unaccountable military budget, which soaks up most discretionary spending that could be redirected toward the party's proclaimed domestic agenda. During federal-budget negotiations early this year--with Trump requesting a huge Pentagon-budget increase--Nancy Pelosi boasted in an e-mail to House Democrats: "In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense." The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer declared: "We fully support President Trump's Defense Department's request." Months later, an overwhelming majority of House and Senate Democrats supported the massive 2019 "National Defense Authorization Act" of $716 billion.
Trump has a dangerous admiration for authoritarian leaders. Democrats need to condemn such admiration without succumbing to reckless bellicosity.
The United States and Russia possess 93 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. Yet many Democratic leaders seem oblivious to the threat of armed conflict with Russia--a peril profoundly understood by Democratic presidents during the height of the Cold War. Reacting to evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, numerous Democrats engaged in extreme rhetoric, calling it an "act of war" and "equivalent" to Pearl Harbor. Democratic leaders have rarely acknowledged the crucial need for "a shift in approach toward Russia" including "steps to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers," in the words of an open letter calling for "Election Security and True National Security," released this summer.
On matters of war and peace--for instance, the 17-year war in Afghanistan and the Trump team's extremely one-sided Israel-Palestine policy--top Democrats have offered few alternative policies. They've made scant objections to Trump administration actions that a director at Amnesty International USA, Daphne Eviatar, has described as "hugely expanding the use of drone and airstrikes, including outside of war zones, and increasing civilian casualties in the process."
The party leadership has routinely been absent in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen caused primarily by the U.S.-backed Saudi war. In March, Bernie Sanders, Democrat Chris Murphy, and Republican Mike Lee forced a vote on their Senate resolution to end U.S. military support for the Saudis in Yemen. In the face of White House opposition and indifference among Democratic leaders, it went down to defeat (55-44) thanks to ten Democratic "no" votes. With the disaster continuing to worsen in Yemen, the House Democratic leadership reportedly dragged its feet while progressive first-term Congressman Ro Khanna persistently led a bipartisan effort to get a vote on a similar measure; finally, in late September, Khanna was able to introduce the resolution with some high-level party support.
Democrats often denounce the GOP for immoral and extremist domestic policies favoring the powerful. The party's failure to challenge such foreign policies is a moral and political tragedy.
Efforts to democratize the Democratic Party made some progress in August 2018 when the full DNC voted to bar superdelegates from voting for the presidential nominee on the first ballot. This reduction in the power of superdelegates grew out of anger among Bernie Sanders supporters about DNC favoritism for Hillary Clinton. In the end, the reform passed with much support from the Clinton wing of the party and a major assist from DNC chair Tom Perez.
Contrary to claims made by superdelegate defenders, the reform moved toward greater racial diversity at the national convention. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 20 percent of superdelegates were black and about 36 percent were people of color; numbers provided by the Hillary Clinton campaign showed that convention delegates as a whole were more diverse than superdelegates--25 percent black and 50 percent people of color.
The DNC'S encouraging action on superdelegate reform contrasts sharply with the DNC's failure to act on a proposal by its Unity Reform Commission to establish a Financial Oversight Committee that would present an annual report on the DNC budget to the entire DNC, so that it could assess the effectiveness of expenditures and staff, as required by the DNC's Bylaws. The current Finance Committee--entirely appointed by the DNC chair--conducts no such evaluations. A Financial Oversight Committee could help achieve what the DNC still lacks: transparency and accountability in how DNC money is spent.
To get closer to living up to its name, the Democratic Party should rely on a broad base of small donors and refuse donations from corporations, particularly those with interests adverse to the party's platform. The DNC's reversal of its ban on fossil-fuel donations was a step backward.
This summer, the DNC voted in reforms to promote more openness and accessibility in presidential primaries and caucuses. The reforms urge state parties to work with their state government to combat voter suppression and implement measures such as same-day party switching and same-day registration. An extreme example of antidemocratic obstacles is in the state of New York, where voters must declare their party affiliation more than six months in advance.
Barriers to democracy inside the Democratic Party have obstructed efforts to make the party a powerful vehicle for progressive change. During the last year, grassroots pressure has reduced some of those barriers. Looking ahead, a truly democratic Democratic Party could profoundly revitalize the politics of our country.
This excerpt was originally published in The Nation. The full report is available here.
The new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator joins "a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health," said one critic.
Echoing a party-line vote by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the chamber's Republicans on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former televison host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Since Trump nominated Oz—who previously ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania—a wide range of critics have argued that the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon "is profoundly unqualified to lead any part of our healthcare system, let alone an agency as important as CMS," in the words of Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
After Thursday's 53-45 vote to confirm Oz, Weissman declared that "Republicans in the Senate continued to just be a rubber stamp for a dangerous agenda that threatens to turn back the clock on healthcare in America."
Weissman warned that "in addition to having significant conflicts of interest, Oz is now poised to help enact the Trump administration's dangerous agenda, which seeks to strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act from hundreds of millions of Americans and to use that money to give tax breaks to billionaires."
"As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz will also seek to further privatize Medicare, increasing the risk that seniors will receive inferior care and further threatening the long-term health of the Medicare program. We already know that privatized Medicare costs taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs," he continued, referring to Medicare Advantage plans.
CMS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, like Oz, came under fire for his record of dubious claims during the confirmation process. Weissman said that "Dr. Oz is joining a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health. This is yet another dark day for healthcare in America under Trump."
In the middle of Trump's tariff disaster, the Senate is voting to confirm quack grifter Dr. Oz to lead the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.
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— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Oz's confirmation came a day after Trump announced globally disruptive tariffs and Senate Republicans unveiled a budget plan that would give the wealthy trillions of dollars in tax cuts at the expense of federal food assistance and healthcare programs.
"While Dr. Oz would rather play coy, this is no hypothetical. Harmful cuts to Medicaid or Medicare are unavoidable in the Trump-Republican budget plan that prioritizes another giant tax break for the president's billionaire and corporate donors," Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said ahead of the vote.
"None of Dr. Oz's 'miracle' cures that he's peddled over the years will help seniors when their fundamental health security is ripped away to make the rich richer," Carrk continued. "And while privatizing Medicare may enrich Dr. Oz's family and big insurance friends, it will cost taxpayers far more and leave millions of patients vulnerable to denials of care and higher out-of-pocket costs."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was similarly critical, saying after the vote that "at a time when our population is growing older and the need for access to home care, nursing homes, affordable prescription drugs, and quality medical care has never been greater, Americans deserve better than a snake oil salesman leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
"Dr. Mehmet Oz has been shilling pseudoscience to line his own pockets. He can't be trusted to defend Medicare and Medicaid from billionaires who want to dismantle and privatize the foundation of affordable healthcare in this country," the union leader added. "AFSCME members—including nurses, home care and childcare providers, social workers and more—will be watching and fighting back against any effort to weaken Medicare and Medicaid. The 147 million seniors, children, Americans with disabilities, and low-income workers who rely on these programs for affordable access to healthcare deserve nothing less."
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—told Al Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not be rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
"Working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it," wrote one longtime progressive strategist.
Dan Osborn, an Independent U.S. Senate candidate who struck a chord with working-class voters in Nebraska and came within striking distance of unseating his Republican opponent last year, announced Thursday that he's considering another run, this time challenging GOP Sen. Pete GOP Ricketts, who is up for election in 2026.
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic," Osborn wrote in a thread on X on Thursday. "I'll run against Pete Ricketts—if the support is there." Osborn said that he's launching an exploratory committee and would run as Independent, as he did in 2024.
Ricketts has served as a senator since 2023, and prior to that was the governor of Nebraska from 2015-2023. By one estimate, Ricketts has a net worth of over $165 million—though the wealth of his father, brokerage founder Joe Ricketts, and family is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
A mechanic and unionist who helped lead a strike against Kellogg's cereal company, Osborn lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) by less than 7 points in November 2024 in what became an unexpectedly close race.
Although he didn't win, he overperformed the national Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other candidates running against Republicans in competitive Senate races, according to The Nation.
"Billionaires have bought up the country and are carving it up day by day," said Osborn Thursday. "The economy they've built is good for them, bad for us. Good for huge multinationals and multibillionaires. Bad for workers. Bad for small businesses, bad for family farmers. Bad for anyone who wants Social Security to survive. Bad for your PAYCHECK."
Osborn cast the potential race as between "someone who's spent his life working for a living and will never take an order from a corporation or a party boss" and "someone who's never worked a day in his life and is entirely beholden to corporations and party."
"We could take on this illness, the billionaire class, directly," he said.
Osborn, who campaigned on issues like Right to Repair and lowering taxes on overtime payments, earned praise from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who told The Nation in late November that Osborn's bid should be viewed as a "model for the future."
Osborn "took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign," Sanders said.
In reaction to the news that Osborn is exploring a second run, a former Sanders campaign manager and longtime progressive Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, wrote: "working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it."