The Democratic National Committee has been voting on the 2020 platform, and if you’ve been mystified (and upset!) about the outcome, you’re not alone. You would think that in a democracy, if the majority of people want something, our delegates and elected officials would speak on behalf of the people work to make that something come to fruition.
Unfortunately, the United States is not a democracy.
Marijuana
Marijuana is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Across the country, grassroots organizations are working to decriminalize and legalize marijuana because there is no reason for it to be classified as a Schedule I drug alongside heroin and bath salts. Nobody ever ate a face high on marijuana. The continued vilification of marijuana is a holdover from the racist Refer Madness days of yore where lawmakers convinced everybody that Black men would smoke weed, turn into King Kong, and steal their white women. That racism never really went away. Who gets arrested for smoking weed and who doesn’t? Who is in jail for smoking weed and who gets to open dispensaries?
Given that history, it’s not a surprise that liberal-minded people have moved toward legalizing marijuana. In 1969, support for legalization was 12%. In 1977, it was 28%. Not much changed for the next couple of decades — support for legalization didn’t pass 30% until 2000. However, between 2000 and now, support has grown to 66%. A clear majority of Americans want marijuana to be legal, and among Democrats support is at 76%. (Even Republicans have tipped over into the majority with 51%.)
The DNC voted against adding marijuana legalization to the platform.
Democratic National Committee delegates voted 105-60 against including marijuana legalization in the party platform on Monday.
The draft version of the platform supports decriminalizing marijuana use and legalizing medical marijuana, adding that it should be left up to the states “to make their own decisions about recreational use.”
The platform was unlikely to ever endorse full legalization, since Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee, does not back the policy. He supports federal decriminalization, which would take away incarceration for possession.
But Dennis Obduskey, a delegate who introduced the legalization amendment during the meeting of the DNC’s platform committee, noted that the current document is a step back from the 2016 platform, which supported “providing a reasoned pathway for future legalization.”
(cont. HuffPo)
A majority of the country wants legal weed. A hefty majority of Democratic voters wants legal weed. Biden does not want legal weed and the delegates fall in line behind him.
Medicare for All
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country where, if you got sick, you could go to the doctor without worrying about whether you’ll go bankrupt? In the middle of a deadly pandemic, wouldn’t it be great to be able to go to your local healthcare provider and ask for a coronavirus test without insurance? (We can do that here in NYC, but in many places in the US, you need insurance or you need to be an essential worker or both.)
The rest of the country thinks so too. 66% of voters support Medicare for All — that’s 46% of Republicans (because you know how they are) and a whopping 88% of Democrats. There aren’t a whole lot of things you can get 88% of a group to agree on, but clearly Americans who are voting Democrats into office want Medicare for All.
The DNC is not adding it to the platform.
BREAKING: The DNC Platform Committee has VOTED DOWN support for #MedicareForAll: 36 yes – 125 no – 3 abstain pic.twitter.com/sMJ1s27JHA
— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) July 27, 2020
Here’s my Sitting On My Beanbag Chair With No Expertise opinion. We’ve seen things like this happen before, where it seems a majority of us want one thing and our officials ignore that in favor of what’s good for them or their career. Our politicians are beholden to donors, so if we want more money for solar energy but the oil guy is paying for the campaign, we don’t get more money for solar energy. This doesn’t quite feel the same.
Instead, I feel like I’m being taken for granted, that my vote is a given, and the party and platform feels free to capitulate to the minority of loud, moderate, and reliable voters. I don’t have any insights to their actual process, so feel free to draw your own conclusions, but it looks to me that the DNC is playing the odds, and those odds are against the majority because most of us will in fact support the party even if the platform isn’t as progressive as we all want and deserve.
There’s no medicare and no weed, but I’m still going to do my best to make sure we get Democrats elected as opposed to Republicans. I’m not going to sit out, because there’s too much at stake. On the other hand, the moderates who would be upset by free healthcare and legal marijuana could in fact turn away, withdraw their support, and just sit at home. They’re not as upset at the direction of the country, so they don’t have the same fiery desire to make sure we do in fact get as many Republicans out of office as possible. Those moderates are older and they more reliably turn up to the polls. So the DNC looks at it and says, “here are these people who always vote and work for us who MIGHT NOT VOTE if we make changes, and here are these people who vote sometimes and they’ll work whether or not we make changes.”
And the only way to change those odds and that thought process is to actually show up. We go through this every couple of years and at some point it has to stick — young people, you have to vote. People who will be dead before you even throw out some of your spices are building the country you have to live in for the next 4 or 5 decades because you don’t vote. And the DNC makes undemocratic decisions like these, against the will of the majority, because the minority turns out over and over.
facebook.com/SoLetsTalkAbout/
twitter.com/RafiDAngelo
Email: rafi@soletstalkabout.com
Venmo: Rafi-DAngelo
CashApp: $RafiDAngelo
paypal.me/soletstalkabout
Leave a Reply