(CNN) — The Democratic Party’s manifesto, released on Sunday, on the eve of the party’s convention in Chicago, is full of contradictions between former President Donald Trump and the old Democratic candidate.
The 92-page, nonbinding document, which lays out the Democratic National Committee’s priorities for the next four years, will be voted on by delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, but it has not been updated since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.
“President Biden, Vice President Harris and the Democrats are stepping up to get the job done,” the program’s preamble states.
Platforms that lay out the party’s broad goals and policy views are typically designed to reflect the priorities of the respective presidential candidates, but Harris officially secured the Democratic nomination in late July – and began laying out the details of her policy agenda on Friday with the unveiling of an economic platform in North Carolina.
Her campaign has already distanced itself from some of the more progressive positions she took as a presidential candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries. And since the platform released Sunday night was designed for a Biden re-election campaign, it’s not clear whether Harris will support every one of her principles.
Steve Grossman, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Bill Clinton’s presidency, said it was no surprise that Harris’ team did not want “a split on programmatic issues” in the short time between her nomination as the party’s nominee and the convention.
“The bigger question that will determine everything — and has determined everything since the president dropped out of the race and Kamala became the nominee — is how to create unity in the party,” Grossman said. “The differences between different communities and voting groups — and there are clearly differences on a variety of issues — have to be put aside in the service of the larger goal and the common good.”
In many ways, the Democrats’ program is already outdated.
On the economy, the program includes sections on expanding tax breaks for working people, but it does not go as far as Harris’ proposal for a $6,000 tax break for middle-class and working-class families with newborns.
And while the platform criticizes companies for keeping their prices high even though their costs have fallen, Harris’ proposal for a nationwide ban on price gouging in the grocery trade has no place in it.
The program also includes an entire section on the war between Israel and Hamas. While it does not deviate from Biden’s support for Israel, which has been criticized by some in the party because of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, it does try to highlight the government’s humanitarian efforts in the enclave.
The commitment to Israel’s security and its right to self-defense is described as an “ironclad commitment” and Biden has worked “tirelessly” to “accelerate and ensure the unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.”
The program also calls for a ceasefire, which it says will “lead to a more secure Israel” and “enable Arab states and the international community to help rebuild the Gaza Strip without allowing Hamas to rearm.”
The document is also explicitly directed against Trump. Section by section, it sets out the differences with the former president.
On the economy, it says Trump is “focused on rigging the game for his billionaire donors.” And on the Gaza issue, it says he “refuses to support the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.”
The program touts the bipartisan border security bill and criticizes Republicans who blocked it in Congress earlier this year for “lacking the courage to stand up to Trump.” That deal, the program says, “would have made our country safer and secured our border while treating people fairly and humanely and expanding legal immigration, which is consistent with our values as a nation.” In contrast, it attacks Trump’s plans, saying they would “destroy our economy and tear families apart.”
The form of the document itself also differs from that of the Republicans.
While the Republicans have completely revised their platform this year and have now released a much shorter, 16-page document that focuses primarily on general policy goals, the Democrats’ platform goes into more detail on a wider range of issues.
The Democratic program’s foreign policy chapter, which runs to just over 14 pages, includes special sections on Europe, the Middle East, China, the Indo-Pacific, Africa and the Western Hemisphere.
Also included are sections on the environment, gun violence, civil rights and what Biden called the “unity agenda,” which includes combating the opioid epidemic and the Cancer Moonshot program, among other things.
The-CNN-Wire
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