Throughout the draft Democratic platform is a bunch of populist talk that is thoroughly undermined by the Democrats’ own corporatist policies and proposals.
“Democrats will reform the tax code to be more progressive and equitable,” the platform says. Their party leaders are promising to do the exact opposite.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, promised last week: “If I become majority leader … one of the first I will do is we will eliminate” forever the cap on deductibility of state and local income taxes. Eliminating this cap would only cut taxes for wealthy people, with a majority of the benefit going to the top 1%.
The platform also asserts that Democrats will battle corporate consolidation: “Democrats are concerned that the increase in corporate concentration across a wide range of industries, from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to agribusiness and retail chains, could be stifling competition and innovation and creating monopoly conditions that harm consumers.”
If this is true, it’s a huge departure from recent years. Corporate consolidation was Democratic policy in the Obama years. Obamacare accelerated the consolidation of hospitals. And not just by accident — this was part of the point of the law. The architects wanted there to be fewer, bigger healthcare providers, and they wrote the law with the intention of bringing that about.
Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explicitly saw big banks as crucial to the U.S. economic system. So, when the financial crisis wrecked the big banks, Geithner made sure to not merely prevent a disorderly collapse, but to make sure those very institutions survived. He then supported a regulatory agenda that led to more bank consolidation.
Joe Biden, Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi were central to the corporatist Obama economic agenda.
The 2020 draft platform says Democrats want to fix the tax code. “Our tax system has been rigged against the American people by big corporations and their lobbyists, and by Republican politicians who dole out tax cuts to their biggest donors while leaving working families to struggle.”
Yet, the very same platform draft calls for a higher corporate rate combined with more loopholes — which is exactly the tax system preferred by revolving-door tax lobbyists and the big corporations that can afford to hire them.
For instance, the platform says, “We will expand effective tax credits that support domestic manufacturing and grow rural manufacturing jobs through investments in bio-based manufacturing.”
But a lower, simpler corporate tax rate is best for small businesses who can’t afford 1,000 tax lawyers. If you’re General Electric, on the other hand, complexity is its own subsidy.
Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi are corporatists. They believe in big government working together with big business. They are also mindfully shaping the Democrats into the uncontested party of the rich. Nobody should fall for their platform’s populist posturing.
