From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Why I Am Voting No on the Democratic Party Platform
Date August 15, 2020 1:44 AM
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[History teaches us that sometimes an issue is so great that it
should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or
against the platform. And Medicare for All is that issue. ]
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WHY I AM VOTING NO ON THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM  
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Ro Khanna
August 13, 2020
Common Dreams
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_ History teaches us that sometimes an issue is so great that it
should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or
against the platform. And Medicare for All is that issue. _

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is interviewed by CQ Roll Call in his
Cannon Building office on Wednesday, April 10, 2019, Tom Williams/CQ
Roll Call)

 

I will do everything possible to help end the disastrous presidency of
Donald Trump, and that means emphatically supporting Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris. At the same time, after much deliberation, I am
announcing via this article for _Common Dreams_ that I will not be
voting for the platform
[[link removed]] (pdf)
that has been put in front of Democratic National Convention delegates
for our approval.

To be clear: I respect and appreciate the people who worked to put
this platform together. I know those who worked on it did so with a
strong sense of purpose, wanting to make this a better party. And I
recognize that the platform includes many positive planks. Among its
breakthroughs is a call for a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour.
There's much progress embodied in the platform.

"I will be voting 'No' on the platform because when we say that
healthcare is a human right, we must truly mean it—and fight for
it."

Yet history teaches us that the Democratic Party has sometimes faced
an issue so great that it alone should be the yardstick for measuring
the wisdom of voting for or against the platform. This is one of those
times.

In 1948, there was going to be a split in the Democratic Party
regardless of the national convention's vote on civil rights. Those
who stood up and demanded a plank for civil rights in the platform
fundamentally changed our party's direction.

Likewise, in 1968, I also believe that I would have stood up and not
supported a platform that failed to clearly call for ending the U.S.
warfare in Vietnam.

In my view, 2020 presents us with another such issue. 

I believe that moving away from a profit-based healthcare system is
the moral issue of our time. And in the final analysis, because of
that belief, I could not vote for a platform that lacks a clear
statement supporting Medicare for All.

I have heard the arguments made as to why I, or any other delegate,
should just get in line and vote for the platform. Two of those
arguments resonated, and I would like to address them.

"With Trump in the White House," some might say, "we need 100 percent
unity, and anything that would chip away at unity is dangerous to
undertake—including a no vote on the platform."

No doubt, the specter of four more years of Donald Trump is a
compelling argument for unity—but the thing is, I see a vote of
conscience against the platform as an ultimate show of unity. A party
that cannot embrace honest debate and differences of opinion would be
too rigid to learn or to grow wiser.

Some may ask: "Why does the left have such a hard time understanding
that you don't get 100 percent of what you want, that the truly great
gains are made incrementally?"

To this I say, nobody understands the realities of incrementalism
better than progressives. Harry Truman ran and won on universal
healthcare in 1948, and it was part of Democratic Party platforms
until 1980. Thirty-six years later, the 2016 platform merely called
for lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 55. The 2020 platform
proposes raising the goal to 60. That is not incrementalism; that is
moving backwards.

"I see a vote of conscience against the platform as an ultimate show
of unity. A party that cannot embrace honest debate and differences of
opinion would be too rigid to learn or to grow wiser."

I will be voting "No" on the platform because when we say that
healthcare is a human right, we must truly mean it—and fight for it.
I believe if we remain stuck on such concepts as "affordable" when
talking about solutions to healthcare accessibility, we are badly
constrained inside a limited debate. 

I will cast my one vote of "No" for every person who has had to
ration medication to afford food, or who has lost a loved one because
a procedure that a doctor said was needed was not covered in an
insurance plan. 

I will cast a "No" vote because, in the words of our great Democratic
National Committee member from Iowa, Jodi Clemens, "Our friends are
dying"—and I want my party, the Democratic Party, to address this
moral problem with clarity of moral purpose.

As James Baldwin wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed until it is faced." We are now long past
the time when our country should face the cruel injustice of a system
that denies healthcare as a human right. And when we face it, we can
change it—with Medicare for All.

_RO KHANNA [[link removed]] (D-Calif.)
is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he serves as
the First Vice Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He was a
national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
After an organizing drive by Sanders delegates in the state, he was
elected as a co-chair of California’s delegation to the 2020
Democratic National Convention. Follow him on Twitter: @RoKhanna
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