Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are heavily included in the Democratic Party platform for 2024.
On the eve of the Chicago convention, the Democratic Party revealed its proposed platform on Sunday. It is chock full of differences between the former Democratic nominee and President Donald Trump.
Delegates to the Democratic annual Committee's annual convention on Monday will cast their votes on the 92-page nonbinding document that spells out the agenda for the next four years. However, since Vice President Kamala Harris was endorsed to succeed President Joe Biden last month, and Biden withdrew from the contest, it has not been updated.
The preamble of the platform states, "President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are running to finish the job."
Platforms are usually designed to reflect the priorities of the party's presidential nominees. They set forth the general objectives and policies that the party supports. But Harris only started outlining her policy platform with the launch of an economic platform in North Carolina on Friday, having formally secured the Democratic nomination in late July.
Certain of the more progressive stances Hillary had before running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary have already been renounced by her campaign. Furthermore, it's unclear whether Harris will back each element of the plan because it was designed with a Biden reelection campaign in mind. It was unveiled on Sunday night.
In a Monday Truth Social post, Trump drew attention to the platform's recurring allusions, saying, "It shows that the Platform is not that important to them when they won't even make the change."
The references are "an open admission that Kamala has no policies of her own," according to a statement made earlier in the day by Dylan Johnson, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. She doesn't have a plan to address the numerous problems she has caused.
It's not surprising that Harris' team would not have wanted to "create any divisiveness whatsoever around platform issues" in the brief period between her announcement as the party's nominee and the convention, according to Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Bill Clinton's administration.
"Building party unity is the bigger question that will guide everything, and it has guided everything since the president withdrew from the race and Kamala emerged as the nominee," Grossman stated. "Putting aside differences in the service of the greater good and greater goal among various communities and constituencies, of which there are undoubtedly differences on a number of issues."
The Democratic platform is already out of date in a lot of ways.
Regarding the economics, the program touches on extending working-class tax credits, although it stops short of proposing a tax credit of $6,000 for middle-class and working families with new babies, as suggested by Harris.
The platform also ignores Harris's call for a federal ban on price gouging on food, even as it condemns businesses for maintaining high pricing despite declining costs.
There is a lengthy section about the Israel-Hamas conflict on the platform as well. It remains true to Biden's backing of Israel, which some in the party have criticized due to the thousands of civilian fatalities in Gaza, but it does make an effort to attract attention to the administration's humanitarian work within the enclave.
It notes that while Biden has worked "tirelessly" to "surge and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people," the commitment to Israel's security and right to self-defense is "ironclad."
A cease-fire agreement is also advocated for in the platform, claiming that it "will lead to a more secure Israel" and that it "allows Arab nations and the international community to help rebuild Gaza in a manner that does not allow Hamas to re-arm."
Moreover, the paper is overtly hostile to Trump. It lists differences with the previous presidency section by section.
It contends that Trump "is focused on rigging the game for his billionaire donors" with regard to the economy. Furthermore, it states that he "refuses to endorse the political aspirations of the Palestinian people" in regards to Gaza.
The bipartisan border security plan is praised on the platform, which also attacks Republicans for obstructing it in Congress earlier this year on the grounds that "they lack the courage to stand up to Trump." According to the platform, that agreement "would have expanded legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation, and made our country safer and our border more secure, while treating people fairly and humanely." It criticizes Trump's ideas, on the other hand, claiming that they would "devastate our economy and tear families apart."
The document's actual format differs from the Republicans' as well.
The Republican platform was totally revised this year, producing a considerably shorter 16-page document that mostly outlines the party's basic policy objectives. In contrast, the Democratic platform delves deeper into a greater range of subjects.
With a little over 14 pages, the Democratic platform's foreign policy chapter is divided into sections focusing on Europe, the Middle East, China, the Indo-Pacific region, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere.
Sections on the environment, gun violence, civil rights, and what Biden has dubbed the "Unity Agenda," which addresses the opioid crisis and the "Cancer Moonshot" initiative, are also featured.
