After two days of negotiations on issues such as health care and minimum wage, the Democratic Party’s platform committee approved a draft just a week before the Democratic National Convention.
Though Bernie Sanders is pleased with the progressive platform and Hillary Clinton adopted many of Sanders’s views, millennials won’t fall in line.
Though the party aspires for unity, a more progressive platform did little to endear Clinton to the Sanders-supporting millennials. When a final amendment was proposed that would announce Clinton as the official nominee and credit Sanders with bringing millennials into the party, Sanders supporters in the public gallery booed loudly and insisted that Sanders continue with his campaign.
The amendment was withdrawn.
Most notable of the agreed-upon amendments was Clinton’s support of a $15 hourly federal minimum wage and her support of a government-run alternative to private health care, a “public option,” according to her campaign. Those amendments fell in line with many of Sanders’s important campaign points.
“We have made enormous strides,” Sanders said in a statement on Sunday. “Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process — many for the first time — we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”
However, far from inspiring unity, Sanders supporters plan to protest during the Democratic National Convention, and a march on the convention has already been planned.
“This march is in protest to the highly biased and unfair treatment, demonstrated by the DNC, towards presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders,” describes the official march Facebook page. “It has been blatantly clear that the establishment politics of the DNC has tried to tip the scales during this election, and has not represented the will of the citizens. We have to make our voices heard.”
