Democrats’ new platform reads like Socialist Manifesto
By Michael J. Pappas
Thousands of delegates, party luminaries and celebrities descended on Chicago last week to confirm the selection of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s standard-bearer for the 2024 election. Their first order of business was approving the Democratic Party Platform – the set of principles, goals and policy positions that guide the party’s approach to governance over the next year.
“If someone tells you who they are, believe them” is a time-honored political rule. And if you read this 90-page Democratic Party Platform, it becomes clear that Democrats are telling Americans that socialism has become the official doctrine of their party.Nowhere was this more evident than in the platform’s health care section.
While advocating near-full control of the health care system was once reserved for the most radical Democrats in Congress, it’s now part of the Democratic Party’s official vision.
For nearly seven decades, the most extreme center-left members of Congress have introduced legislation to mandate Medicare for All – which would implement a “single-payer” (“government-run”) health care system in the United States. None of these bills has ever passed, and the version introduced last year received the support of less than 25% of House members. With this pure dose of socialism now supported by more than 75% of Democrats nationwide, however, the party added flowery language to the platform about “expanding health care nationwide” and “expanding the Affordable Care Act.”
That's nothing but clear dog whistles for this Socialist idea.
What was once advocated only by extreme Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is now the party’s mainstream position.
The costs of this idea would be astronomical – some estimates place it at $4 trillion, nearly double the government’s current spending level.
What was once advocated only by extreme Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is now the party’s mainstream position.
The costs of this idea would be astronomical – some estimates place it at $4 trillion, nearly double the government’s current spending level.
Quality of health care would undoubtedly decrease, too, as doctors, nurses and other medical professionals become government employees. Imagine receiving the same quality of service at a hospital that you get when you renew your driver’s license. That’s a scary thought for everyone except the pharmaceutical giants, which stand to benefit from the inflated, government-created demand for the products and services that Medicare for All would provide.
Speaking of Big Pharma, while Democrats have not been shy about currying favor with this interest group (February reporting from the New York Post demonstrated this point well), doing the drug industry’s bidding is now part of the official Democratic Party platform, too.In its new policy document, the Democrat National Committee took a direct shot at pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs, the companies that businesses hire to negotiate drug pricing with pharmaceutical giants and keep costs low. It undoubtedly did this to please the drugmakers that spend millions of dollars lobbying and advertising to persuade lawmakers to regulate these private companies – which negatively affects their bottom line.
Yet even though research from the independent, non-partisan Government Accountability Office and many other economists has shown that PBMs reduce the list prices of drugs for consumers pretty significantly, the new Democrat platform labels them as problem actors.
So much for “stopping the influence of special interests” – which is laughably also part of the Democrats’ newly passed party vision.
The list of bad policies in the DNC’s new platform goes on ad nauseam – from taking legal action against energy companies for the supposed crime of emitting carbon and mandating a federal takeover of elections, the Democrats are clearly intent on transforming the United States into a mirror image of the world’s authoritarian socialist regimes, where:
The list of bad policies in the DNC’s new platform goes on ad nauseam – from taking legal action against energy companies for the supposed crime of emitting carbon and mandating a federal takeover of elections, the Democrats are clearly intent on transforming the United States into a mirror image of the world’s authoritarian socialist regimes, where:
- Government is all-powerful
- Citizens lose their freedoms, and
- Dissenters get treated as enemies.
It reads like a bad novel that Fidel Castro would have written, extolling the virtues of political change that must be forced on people.
This would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous – dangerous to American families, dangerous to our security and dangerous to our way of life.
This would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous – dangerous to American families, dangerous to our security and dangerous to our way of life.
I hope Americans will take note of this and act accordingly when they go to their polling places on Nov. 5.
The Honorable Michael J. Pappas is a former member of Congress from New Jersey.
