Some local Democrats downplayed the importance of the platform language in characterizing the party as a whole. Mook, the son of a Dartmouth professor, grew up in Norwich, near the New Hampshire border.As a 20-year-old Boston University student, Weaver drove Sanders around the small state during Sanders unsuccessful campaign for governor.
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Bernie Sanders has achieved a few “very important victories” in the Democratic platform draft, but the Vermont senator vows to continue fighting for the inclusion of progressive issues. While it does not bind the Democratic nominee to stances, it serves as a guidepost for the party moving forward. Officially, it is a non-binding commitment, but the platform acts as a crucial outline for the entire party.
The Democratic National Convention’s full Platform Committee will discuss the draft at a meeting next month in Orlando, Fla., with a vote at the convention in Philadelphia in late July.
Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Friday that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in the November presidential election, offering one more indication that he has given up on his own candidacy.
“We will defend American jobs and American workers by saying “no” to bad trade deals and unfair trade practices, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, Ms. Clinton had said.
As our Chairman, Congressman Elijah Cummings, directed us at the outset, our platform does not merely reflect common ground – it seeks higher ground.
Additionally, an amendment calling for an end to Israel’s “occupation and illegal settlements” and urging an global effort to rebuild Gaza was voted down.
Sanders has pushed for a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
“The Clinton delegates also voted down definitive language to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour”.
The panel did vote unanimously to back a proposal to abolish the death penalty and adopted language calling for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and enacting a modern-day Glass-Steagall Act-measures that Sanders said he was “pleased” about. She also said she supported the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. The draft reviewed by committee members yesterday included a call to review past trade agreements and update them to reflect these principles. Clinton said during a debate this year that capital punishment should only be used in limited cases involving “heinous crimes”. Reflecting Sanders’ influence, the document identifies the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour as a “starvation wage” that “must be increased to a living wage”, phrases that Sanders often uses in his speeches. It also voted down a proposal to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership from coming up for a vote in this Congress (though that’s somewhat understandable since such a vote would have bucked President Obama), as well as nixing a carbon tax and a fracking ban.
Only the night before Sanders had declined to refer to Clinton or formally concede defeat during a speech in NY in which he stressed that his “political revolution is just getting started”. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Luis Gutierrez of IL, who were appointed to the drafting committee by Sanders and Clinton respectively, released a joint statement through the left-wing Jewish organization J Street playing down talk of a rift within the Democratic Party. He is more than likely collecting data and information to use in his favor at the convention. To now ask them to make a pragmatic choice in favor of Clinton nearly seems like a betrayal of everything they signed up for, no matter how ghastly the alternative to a Clinton victory is.
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