The DNC’s extreme platform

Gone are the days of legislative proceduralism, if this document is to be believed. Much of the party’s stated goals can be facilitated through the administrative state — and the Democrats are quite clear they know how to use it. For all the mockery that came from the Right over the “Green New Deal,” such sweeping bills have largely been set aside in favor of bureaucrats with hammers. When it comes to antitrust enforcement, for example, the Democrats intend to halt prospective corporate mergers on “racial equity” grounds, a whole new toolbox for regulators in Washington to fiddle with. Where the platform lists the ways in which monopolies can distort markets, “consumer prices and … competition” come last and after their “potential effects on … low-income and marginalized individuals.”

Much of the language in the document is a series of bait-and-switches like the one above, with declarations beginning with promising language, only to be concluded by intersectional jargon and handouts for supposed victims of systemic racism. “Democrats know that small businesses are among the best job creators in our country,” one line states, reminiscent of something from a stump speech by Mitt Romney in 2012. But the party’s solution to helping out the mom and pop stores and restaurants ravaged by the coronavirus lockdowns is to race- and gender-test federal funds to “increase funding for programs supporting businesses owned by women and people of color,” meaning most business owners are simply out of luck.

That theme continues throughout the 80-page pitch, in which even access to abortion, which Democrats now say ought to be covered through federal welfare programs, is deemed particularly important “for millions of women,” but “especially low-income women, women of color, and LGBTQ+ people.” Expansive government programs for those with body dysmorphia can be rightfully interpreted as a chief priority for the Democratic Party, with the word “transgender” appearing more times in its platform than “inequality” or “taxes.” Democrats pledge to mandate that gender transition surgery and hormone therapy be covered by all health insurance plans, public or private.

Remedying towns’ racial and ethnic imbalances will also be on the administrative state’s agenda, whether Congress is on board or not.

“Democrats will vigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, and the disparate impact standard, and hold lenders accountable for discriminatory practices,” the party promises. Under the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, contrived by the Obama administration near the end of the president’s second term, local governments can be penalized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for alleged systemic racism, such as average incomes between whites and blacks differing more than a bureaucrat thousands of miles away deems acceptable. Consequences of violating the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule range from mandated low-income housing, forced tax revenue sharing with less affluent towns, or the elimination of certain zoning regulations.

It will come as no surprise that the platform guarantees a U-turn on immigration from the Trump administration. Not only do the Democrats plan on reversing every single one of President Trump’s immigration-related executive orders, but they wish to turbocharge the much-abused chain migration system by moving to eliminate “family-based green card backlogs and reform the system to speed up family-based visas,” all while ending “workplace and community” raids, which, depending on one’s definition of “community,” could mean the end of immigration enforcement itself. Joe Biden himself has already vowed to halt all deportations in his first 100 days as president.

The Federal Reserve is not spared either. Since 1977, Congress has tasked the Fed with overseeing the nation’s monetary policy. Its objectives have slowly sprawled beyond controlling inflation and stimulating employment, but the Democrats want to give it one more job: enforcing “racial equity.” It remains unclear what exactly that means in practice, but we do know that a Democratic president would nominate a chairwoman or governors who would work on “countering … racial employment and wage gaps.” How the Fed’s “racial equity” policies would affect interest rates is unclear, but injecting critical race theory into the central bank likely means the end of its ostensible political neutrality.

If we don’t know what intersectionality means for monetary policy, we do know what it means for the police. Law enforcement, the excesses of which the Democrats call a “stain on the soul of our nation,” requires a complete “overhaul … from the top to the bottom.” The standard left-wing replacements for the criminal justice system, such as expanded educational opportunities and housing, are peppered throughout the Democratic platform, but one stands out: “We believe that if you aren’t old enough to drink, you aren’t old enough to be sentenced to life without parole,” a new kind of extended adolescence that means Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza would have been unjustly locked in prison for the rest of his life had he not committed suicide following his massacre of schoolchildren.

It turns out that much of the language in the new Democratic platform was copied, sometimes word for word, from the summarized findings of the Biden-Bernie Sanders Unity Task Force. Pages in the Democratic Party’s platform on topics such as “PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND BUILDING TRUST BY REFORMING CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM” or the bizarre tangent about transforming the Fed into a college sociology department are identical to those recommended by America’s leading socialists, such as Sen. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Biden made a promise to his vanquished opponent Sanders, out of fear that young leftists would stay at home in November if they felt snubbed, following the end of the Vermont senator’s second (and almost certainly last) presidential campaign that he and his supporters would have a seat at the table when the Democratic Party formulated its agenda. The document reads as though that seat was at the head of the table.

Joseph Simonson is a Washington Examiner political reporter.