Forced to grapple with dissent, the Democratic party continues to splinter.
In St. Louis, key Democrats appointed by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz gathered to create a preliminary draft of the party’s official platform. Though outnumbered by Clinton and Wasserman-Schultz’s picks, Sanders appointees on the committee sought to infuse the platform with strong, unequivocal language about cherished progressive causes. Among these alleged moral imperatives for which amendments were proposed: Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the human right to healthcare coverage, and adjusting the minimum wage for inflation. But Hillary Clinton allies repeatedly blocked the amendments from inclusion in the party’s official ideology. The clash is notable for its closeness — many of the votes were 7-6 — and for its one-sidedness — those aligned with Sanders came away frustrated.
Sanders supporter and president of the American Arab Institute, James Zogby, urged the platform to recognize the purported injustice of Palestinian suffering:
We have to be able to call it what it is: It’s an occupation that humiliates people, that breeds contempt, that breeds anger, despair, and hopelessness that leads to violence … We’re asking to move beyond recognizing they’re there. It’s hearing their voices, understanding their pain, saying that our Democratic party understands that this is a conflict that must be resolved by respecting the rights of both peoples.
Meanwhile, the socialist intellectual Cornel West contended that to do what Zogby asks is necessarily to indict the Jewish state:
The great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel used to say that indifference to evil is more evil than evil itself . . . A condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. It is an occupation. Occupation is evil . . . When the IDF kills innocent people — over 500 babies in 51 days — no matter how many shields they say that Hamas uses — it’s wrong from a moral and spiritual point of view. All we’re trying to say is, the Democratic party must respect the truth. We can never fully respect the Palestinians unless we can name what they’re up against, the boot on their necks.
Quite how this divide can be bridged is unclear. Those appointed to the platform committee by Sanders take a contemptuous position on Israel that is at odds with Democratic orthodoxy. To them, support for Israel is anathema to the progressive cause. It would follow that Democrats who support Israel betray progressive ideals for Jewish money and support: Phillip Weiss called Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech “slavish.” The latent anti-Semitism of this idea notwithstanding, it illustrates a massive discontinuity between the intellectual roots of Sanders’ campaign and the Democratic ideology, which follows Hillary Clinton’s profession of unqualified support for Israel’s existence.
The disunity on Israel-Palestine and other issues led some Sanders allies to disparage the platform. West abstained from supporting the draft, citing the party’s apparent refusal to “say a word about TPP…talk about Medicare for all explicitly…[or vote for] the greatest prophetic voice dealing with impending ecological catastrophe” as reasons. On TPP, Sanders said that he was “disappointed and dismayed” with the platform’s language in a mixed statement about the released platform. Moans from the left can be found all over their outlets of choice about all of these issues.
The extent to which these cracks at the top will disintegrate the Democratic electoral coalition remains to be seen. Recent polls indicate that Sanders supporters are slowly coming around to supporting Clinton. Sanders has sounded notes of support for Clinton lately. Yet leftist discontent with their supposed political vehicle has not ceased.
On both sides, there is palpable exasperation. Bernie’s support has not yet come with an endorsement (Joan Walsh of the Nationis not pleased), and Sanders supporters’ newfound taste for Clinton is far from universal, with 22 percent of declining to get on the saddle. Sanders evidently wants to push the platform farther left, and he has partially succeeded. But on many issues, he and his allies are finding establishment entrenchment too much to overcome.
Conservatives who believe that Clinton and her ideological constellation are as radical as they come are fooling themselves. So, too, are Democrats who believe their party speaks for the left. For now, Republican incompetence will prove an edifying force for the Democrat electorate. But down the road, the party’s ideological manufacturers will have to choose. Do they want to be a true party of the left, with all the accompanying baggage? Or do they just want to say they are?
Democratic Party -- Platform Causes Dissent