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8/12 NOTA, News, & OT

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With Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP pick, Newsom has a chance to appoint history-making senator

With California Sen. Kamala Harris now cemented as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate, Gov. Gavin Newsom could soon face the politically perilous decision of whom to select as her replacement in the U.S. Senate.
The appointment promises to be one of the most consequential of his political career, both in California and in regard to any ambitions the Democratic governor may have for the White House. And it puts him at risk of upsetting some of the most powerful forces within his party no matter what he decides.

During a time of national reflection over the pervasive inequities and injustices suffered by Black Americans, Newsom will face significant pressure to appoint a Black woman to replace Harris. Harris is only the second Black woman in the nation’s history to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Conversely, an open seat would provide Newsom an opportunity to make history by appointing California’s first Latino senator. Though Latino public officials have ascended to other positions of power in California over the last two decades, the state’s most coveted political prizes — its two U.S. Senate seats and the governor’s office — have remained elusive.

“There are so many factors that go into a decision like this for Newsom. Fundamentally, it’s about his legacy,” said Democratic strategist Rose Kapolczynski, who ran campaigns for former California Sen. Barbara Boxer for two decades. “At this moment in time, there is going to be a lot of pressure to appoint a person of color. The dynamics may be somewhat different in November and December, but I don’t think this national reckoning on racial justice is going away.”

Democratic insiders and strategists interviewed by the Los Angeles Times provided their thoughts on those who might be in Newsom’s top tier. They asked not to be identified in order to more freely discuss the merits of Harris’ potential successors.

That list includes: Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Katie Porter of Irvine and Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who was also short-listed as a possible vice presidential nominee for Biden. Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a longtime political ally of the governor, also is at the top of the list, and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia appears to be gaining steam.

Newsom might reach back to his political roots in the Bay Area, a wellspring of political power that has produced California’s last three senators and the last two governors, by tapping Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf or San Francisco Mayor London Breed. The governor could also decide to shore up his support in Southern California by selecting Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who served as U.S. Labor Secretary during the Obama administration, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank or state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego.

Or he could stick to a politician who recently won statewide office, evidence of the ability to defend the Senate seat when the post comes before California voters in the 2022 election. Along with Padilla, that short list includes Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, Controller Betty Yee and Treasurer Fiona Ma. Picking a statewide-office holder would also give Newsom a twofer since he would then have to appoint a replacement for the remainder of that person’s term in office.

Whomever Newsom selects would serve the balance of Harris’ term in the Senate, which ends in January 2023, if the governor decides not to call a special election.

A spokesman for Newsom also said the governor wouldn’t even consider the possibilities until after the November election.

“It’s the furthest thing from his mind,” said Nathan Click. “The governor is squarely focused on leading the state’s response to COVID-19 and helping Californians during this global pandemic.”

Padilla, a former Los Angeles City Council president and state senator, has been one of Newsom’s most loyal political allies over the past decade, and chaired Newsom’s ill-fated run for governor in 2010. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate has for years been mentioned as a possible successor to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who gave Padilla his first major break in politics when she hired him as a staff member.

Mindy Romero, director of the USC Center for Inclusive Democracy, said Padilla would be a top contender if Newsom filled any Senate vacancy — including one that could occur if Feinstein decided to retire before the end of her term in 2024. Not only has Padilla won two statewide races for secretary of state, he also is California’s top Latino elected official in a state with the largest Latino population in the U.S. About 30% of California residents who are eligible to vote are Latino.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. (AP Photo/ Jacquelyn Martin)

“It would be incredibly significant, and I think he will be under pressure to appoint a Latino. It’s a long time coming in this state,” Romero said. “It’s a blue state. You put a Democratic senator in office and they do a good job, they will likely stay in office for decades. In that way it’s like the Supreme Court.”

That wasn’t the case the last time a California governor made a Senate appointment. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson in 1991 chose little-known moderate Republican state Sen. John Seymour of Orange County to succeed him in the U.S. Senate, which Wilson left when he was elected governor. Wilson saw Seymour as an ideological reflection of himself and praised the legislator’s prodigious fundraising abilities. A year after his appointment, however, Seymour was pummeled in the 1992 general election by Feinstein, who won by a 16-percentage-point margin.

The political landscape is even more treacherous today for the GOP. The percentage of Republican registered voters in California declined from 37% in 1992 to 24% this year. During that time, the percentage of Democrats dropped from 49% to 45%. Californians forgoing any partisan affiliation and registering as “no party preference” or “decline to state” increased from 10% in 1992 to 25% this year, putting them ahead of the GOP.

No Republican has won a statewide election in California since 2006.

State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) said she was hopeful that Harris’ replacement in the Senate would be a woman, adding that women continue to be underrepresented in every level of government across the country. Currently, women account for just 26 of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate — only 57 women have ever served in the upper chamber.

Correcting that glaring inequity is essential for the wellbeing of all Americans, Mitchell said, because women elected to political office elevate the importance of issues such as workers’ rights, child care, poverty and affordable housing.

“People who are impacted by those issues seem to fare better when more women are in office,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said that, as a Black woman, Harris had also provided an essential voice in the Senate, speaking out on pay equity, the tragedy of Black men and women dying at the hands of police, and adequate healthcare. Mitchell hopes Newsom will replace that voice in the Senate.

For that and other reasons, Newsom would be hard pressed not to seriously consider Bass, who in recent months rocketed into national prominence as a potential vice presidential candidate. Bass, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, is a seasoned legislator who served as speaker of the California Assembly before her election to the House of Representatives in 2010.

Before entering politics, Bass worked as a community organizer in Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s, joining a cauldron of activism that included young civil rights leaders who went on to become the heart of L.A.’s political establishment — including former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo.

“Of course you would have to consider Congresswoman Bass, along with everyone else,” Durazo said. “Gov. Newsom would have an enormous pool of talent to pick from in California. There’s no shortage, and that’s a great thing.”

Though not well known throughout most of the state, the mayor of Long Beach would also be a history-making pick for Newsom. Garcia, 42, who is the youngest mayor elected in Long Beach, is an immigrant from Peru and is gay. He also was one of the most prominent Latino leaders in Southern California to endorse Newsom for governor during the 2018 race.

Wouldn’t it be a kick if it were Ro Khanna.

I’m still traveling in Colorado, where it is beautiful every day at present, and I’m in either off roading, walking, or riding bikes. But to give one an idea where I stand, NOTA at the moment. (None of the above) But I remain hopeful for a more progressive legislative body.

More news, tweets, videos in the comments section. This serves as an open thread.

8/10 Trump Dumps with EO’s; News Round-up & OT

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Good morning birdies! Let’s get the day going!

Trump’s Social Security payroll tax holiday is the first shot in a class and generational war

President Trump’s memorandum to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ordering that he suspend Social Security taxes for some employers and their employees for the rest of this year makes no sense if the goal is to offset economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.

But it makes a lot of sense if it is to undermine Social Security and stir up class and generational warfare, which is clearly the goal of both Trump and his close ally, Stephen Moore, who has railed against the whole idea of Social Security for years.

FAQ: What is in Trump’s four executive orders

Step back and look at the big picture — and listen to Trump say that he’ll eliminate Social Security tax next year should he be reelected — and you realize that if Trump prevails, it would likely mean the end of Social Security as we’ve known it.

“What President Trump has been calling a Social Security ‘tax holiday’ can easily turn into a permanent vacation,” says William Arnone, chief executive officer of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Let me explain.

Trump originally pitched the idea of including a Social Security tax cut in the upcoming stimulus package to help people who’ve suffered economic damage because of the coronavirus pandemic.

As many people from across the political spectrum (including me) kept saying, this made no economic sense. The reason is obvious — if you’re one of the millions of Americans who’ve lost your job because of covid-19, you’re not paying Social Security tax. Therefore, eliminating that tax doesn’t put any money in your pocket.

But if your idea is to undermine Social Security by turning it into just another federal spending program rather than a program funded by a dedicated payroll tax and a $3 trillion trust fund, eliminating Social Security taxes for some employees and employers for the rest of this year and beyond makes a lot of sense.

In a Fox TV appearance Sunday, Mnuchin said the Treasury would make “an automatic contribution” to the Social Security Trust Fund to offset the loss of payroll tax revenue. And presumably if Trump got reelected and eliminated both the employee and employer portions of the Social Security tax permanently, the Treasury would make up for those losses, too.

What Mnuchin said is clearly designed to reassure people that Social Security is safe now and for future generations. But that’s not the case, because having Social Security funded out of general tax revenue would make it immensely vulnerable to political and financial pressures.

The way the system works now, Social Security takes in 12.4 percent of an employee’s income up to $137,700, split evenly between employer and employee.

Even though Social Security is currently paying out more money than it takes in, it’s not increasing the federal budget deficit, for technical reasons that we won’t go into here.

But if you permanently pay for Social Security out of general tax revenue — which is what would happen under Trump’s “if I’m reelected” scenario — that would greatly increase the federal budget deficit.

It would also turn Social Security from a self-funded intergenerational transfer program — my Social Security taxes paid for my late parents’ benefits, my adult children’s Social Security taxes are paying for my benefits — into just another federal program.

Trump’s proposal is far different than previous temporary Social Security tax cuts, including those for two years during the Obama presidency.

Yes, like Trump’s proposal, the Obama program used general revenue to compensate Social Security for its lost tax payments. But a two percent, two-year cut is a whole different thing than a through-the-end-of-the-year — and possibly forever — “tax holiday.”

That’s why I didn’t criticize the Obama program, but I’m criticizing the Trump program.

Trump’s payroll tax cut is a bad idea

Now, let me show you the class warfare part of what Trump is proposing.

His memorandum covers people earning $104,000 or less in salary, and their employers as well.

The majority of those people are paying more in Social Security tax — including the employer’s portion — than they pay in federal income tax.

Mainstream economists assume that the employer’s 6.2 percent portion is money that employees would otherwise get. That could well be true in the long run — but it’s not true in the short run in a situation like the one we’re in now, where jobs are scarce.

But Trump’s pitch is obvious. He’s implicitly promising what his order calls “the American workers most in need” a 12.4 percent immediate raise because they won’t have to pay their 6.2 percent Social Security tax, and their employers will give these workers the 6.2 percent Social Security tax that they will no longer have to pay.

I suspect that some businesses that want to kiss up to Trump may do this — but I can’t imagine that 6.2 percent migrating to employees from employers anytime soon.

The generational warfare would pit retirees and near-retirees who badly need Social Security against younger people, who think that the program won’t survive long enough to pay them and would rather have money in their pocket today than the prospect of getting Social Security in the future.

I hope I’m wrong about all of this, because I revere Social Security, which has allowed tens of millions of Americans — including some of my family members — to stay out of poverty in their old age and keep their self-respect.

More news, tweets, videos in the comments. See you there!

8/4 AZ, KS, MO, & WA Election Night & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Good evening Birdies! I’m traveling west, but still in the Midwest at present.

Tonight there are primaries going on in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and WA. We have several progressive candidates we’re watching this evening.

  • Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)
  • Cori Bush (MO-01)
  • Joshua Collins (WA-10)
  • Beth Doglio (WA-10)
  • Jon Hoadley (MI-06)
  • Pramila Jayapal (WA-07)
  • Rebecca Parson (WA-06)

If memory serves me, I think the WA-10 race is the first time at the Nest whereby we had 2 candidates we advocated for in a down ballot primary.

There are some other interesting initiatives being voted on, such as Medicaid Expansion in MO. And some GOP races are still going on.

Join me below to find out the results. This is also an Open Thread.

Update:

8/2 Sunday OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

SpaceX has splashed down:

The VP candidates vetting by Biden campaign continued today. Sen Tammy Duckworth and Rep Karen Bass were on FN Sunday this morning. Duckworth was cautious, Bass more confident.

TOP has been full of Lincoln Project ads each day.

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments section. This serves as an open thread.

7/31 TGIF (or Take Out the Trash) News & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

That’s part 1, end of July madness.

Part 2 may be coming to Florida:

I don’t guess Trump will be at Mar-a-largo anytime soon for fundraising events. Update: Trump is in the state of FL tonight concerning hurricane preparations.

More news, tweets, videos in the comments section. Come join us in the conversation.

7/29 News Roundup & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Will vaccine trials reflect America’s diversity?

In a summer dominated by COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice, there are growing demands that drugmakers and investigators ensure that vaccine trials reflect the entire community.

“If Black people have been the victims of COVID-19, we’re going to be the key to unlocking the mystery of COVID-19,” said the Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, a coalition of 150,000 African American churches.

Evans and his team met in mid-July with officials from Moderna, the Massachusetts biotech firm that launched the first COVID vaccine trial in the U.S., to discuss a collaboration in which NBCI would supply African American participants. But that was less than two weeks before the start of a phase 3 trial expected to enroll 30,000 people, and Evans said the meeting was his idea.

“It’s not that the industry came to me,” he said. “I went to the industry.”

Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but on average 5 percent of clinical trial participants, research shows. For Hispanics, trial participation is about 1 percent on average, though they account for about 18 percent of the population.

When it comes to trials for drug treatments and vaccines, diversity matters. For reasons not always fully understood, people of different races and ethnicities can respond differently to drugs or therapies, research shows. Immune response wanes with age, so there’s a high-dose flu shot for people 65 and older.

Still, the pressure to produce an effective vaccine quickly during a pandemic could sideline efforts to ensure diversity, said Dr. Kathryn Stephenson, director of the clinical trials unit in the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“One of the questions that has come up is, What do you do if you’re a site investigator and you have 250 people banging on your door — and they’re all white?” she said.

Do you enroll those people, reasoning that the faster the trial progresses, the faster a vaccine will be available for everyone? Or do you turn away people and slow down the study?

“You’re accelerating development of a vaccine, and if you hit a milestone, what is the meaning of that milestone if you don’t know if it’s very safe or effective in [a given] population? Is that really hitting the milestone for everyone?” she said.

Including people who are elderly or have underlying medical conditions is vital to the science of vaccines and other treatments, even if it’s more difficult to recruit patients otherwise healthy enough to participate, advocates said.

“We have to admit that older adults are the ones who are likely to develop side effects” to treatments and vaccines, said Dr. Sharon Inouye, director of the Aging Brain Center and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “On the other hand, that is the population that will be using it.”

People with kidney disease, which affects 1 in 7 U.S. adults, have been left out of clinical research for decades, said Richard Knight, a transplant recipient and president of the American Association of Kidney Patients. Nearly 70 percent of more than 400 kidney disease patients the organization surveyed in July said they’d never been asked to join a clinical trial.

Excluding from the vaccine trial such a large population vulnerable to COVID doesn’t make sense, Knight contended. “If you’re trying to manage this from a public health standpoint, you want to make sure you’re inoculating your highest-risk populations,” he said.

New guidance from the federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates vaccines, “strongly encourages” the inclusion of diverse populations in clinical vaccine development. That includes racial and ethnic minorities, elderly people and those with underlying medical problems, as well as pregnant women.

But the FDA does not require drugmakers and researchers to meet those goals, and will not refuse trial data that doesn’t comply. And while the federal government is rushing billions of dollars to fast-track more than a half-dozen leading candidates for COVID vaccines, the pharmaceutical firms producing them are not required to publicly disclose their demographic goals.

“This is business as usual,” said Marjorie Speers, executive director of Clinical Research Pathways, a nonprofit group in Atlanta that works to increase diversity in research. “It’s very likely these [COVID] trials will not include minorities because there’s not a strong statement to do that.”

The vaccine trials are being coordinated through the COVID-19 Prevention Network, or CoVPN, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. It draws on four long-standing federally funded clinical trial networks, including three that target HIV and AIDS.

Those trial networks were chosen in large part because they have rich relationships in Black, Latino and other minority communities, said Stephaun Wallace, director of external relations for CoVPN. The hope is to leverage existing connections based on trust and collaboration.

“Our clinical trial sites are prepped and ready to engage diverse people,” Wallace said.

Wallace acknowledged, however, that attracting a diverse population requires investigators to be flexible and innovative. There can be practical problems. Clinic hours may be limited or transportation may be an issue. Older people may have problems with sight or hearing and require extra help to follow protocols.

Distrust of the medical establishment also can be a barrier. African Americans, for instance, have a well-founded wariness of medical experiments after the infamous Tuskegee Study and the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks. That extends to suspicion about recommended vaccines, said Wallace.

“Part of the consideration for many groups is not wanting to feel like a guinea pig or feel like they’re being experimented on,” he said.

Moderna, which launched its phase 3 trial Monday, said the company is working to ensure participants “are representative of the communities at highest risk for COVID-19 and of our diverse society.”

However, results of the company’s phase 1 trial, released in mid-July, showed that of 45 people included in that safety test, six were Hispanic, two were Black, one was Asian and one was Native American. Forty were white.

Phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials aim to test the best dose and safety of vaccines in small groups of people. Phase 3 trials assess the efficacy of the drug in tens of thousands of people.

Investigators at nearly 90 sites across the U.S. are preparing now to recruit participants for Moderna’s phase 3 trial. Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at the Emory University School of Medicine, will seek 750 volunteers at three Atlanta-area sites. Half will receive the vaccine; half, placebo injections.

Del Rio has had marked success recruiting minorities for HIV trials and expects similar results with the vaccine trial. “We’re trying to do our best to get out to the communities that are most at risk,” he said.

Meanwhile, vaccine volunteers like Cisneros just want the advanced trials to start. He signed up for the CoVPN trials. But earlier, he also signed up for 1 Day Sooner, an effort to launch human challenge trials, which aim to speed up vaccine development by deliberately infecting participants with the virus. Such trials can be completed in weeks rather than months but risk exposing volunteers to severe illness or death, and federal officials remain leery.

Cisneros is willing to take that risk to help halt COVID-19, which has killed 143,000 Americans. He said it’s a way to take action at a time when the U.S. government has failed to protect minorities, the elderly and other vulnerable people.

“Government is supposed to help those who can’t protect themselves,” he said. “It appears to me the only thing they want to protect is people with money, people with guns — and not brown people like me.”

Indian Country Today notes that Moderna’s phase 1 vaccine trial, which started early this month, included only one Native American.

Join us for more news, tweets, videos in the comments section.

7/28 DNC Votes Down MFA; News Roundup & OT

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‘History Will Not Judge This Kindly’: DNC Platform Committee Votes Down Medicare for All Amendment

The DNC Platform Committee rejected the Medicare for All amendment introduced by longtime single-payer advocate Michael Lighty by a vote of 36-125 during a virtual meeting Monday. The committee also voted down separate attempts to include support for expanding Medicare to children, dropping the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, and legalizing marijuana.

“Shameful. And during a pandemic,” tweeted progressive radio host Kyle Kulinksi in response to the defeat of the Medicare for All amendment. “History will not judge this kindly. It’s like opposing the New Deal during the Great Depression. Unforgivable.”

Come join us for more news, tweets, videos and other jibber jabber in the comments. See you there!

7/27 Ninety-Nine Days Until the National Election & OT

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Bernie Sanders delegates mount convention rebellion over Medicare for All

More than 360 delegates, most of whom back Sanders, have signed on to a pledge to vote against the Democratic Party’s platform if it does not include support for “Medicare for All,” the petition’s organizers told POLITICO. They argue that single-payer health care is an urgent priority amid a worldwide pandemic and the biggest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression.

“This pandemic has shown us that our private health insurance system does not work for the American people. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their health care at the same time,” said Judith Whitmer, a Sanders delegate and chair of the convention’s Nevada delegation who helped spearhead the pledge. “There’s people leaving the hospital now with millions of dollars in medical bills. What are we going to do about that?”

The warning is all but certain to set up a clash between Sanders’ most dedicated supporters and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who opposes Medicare for All, at a time when the party is seeking to demonstrate unity ahead of its August convention. Though the petition signers have little chance of revising the platform to include Medicare for All support, they do have the numbers to draw attention to their protest and cause.

It is also likely to trigger fears among Democratic leaders about a repeat of the 2016 convention, when the party’s divides were on public display as Sanders supporters booed the mention of Hillary Clinton.

The left-wing groups Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction.org are announcing Monday that they support the vow to vote against the platform if it doesn’t include Medicare for All. The Bernie Delegates Network, a coalition made up of hundreds of Sanders delegates, said it will also publicize the petition. Organizers expect those efforts will net hundreds more signatures, including from Biden delegates.

“The sea change that’s underway could swell as a result of this initiative,” said Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate. “It’s a reasonable hope that historians will look back at the next couple of weeks as a time when hundreds of delegates stepped forward and said, ‘This is a red line for a humane society and we’re not going to stop saying so.’”

Biden currently has 2,632 delegates, while Sanders has 1,076, according to POLITICO’s delegate tracker.

Despite their frustration with Biden, progressive leaders behind the pledge all said they are voting for Biden and working to elect him. RootsAction.org, for instance, noted that it is planning to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an effort to persuade swing-state progressives who are on the fence to get behind Biden.

Organizers also said they are not being divisive — rather, it’s the party leaders who are overruling the grassroots who are being divisive, they argued. They point to exit polls showing that majorities of Democratic primary voters across states are in favor of Medicare for All.

“We’re going to fight like hell for Biden. And there’s no contradiction between doing that and supporting this pledge,” Solomon said.

Whitmer said Sanders delegates in Nevada began circulating the pledge on Thursday through Slack and delegate groups. Though she did not provide precise numbers, she said it is safe to say that a majority who signed on are Sanders delegates, though some Biden delegates have as well. Activists hope a significant number of Biden delegates will support the vow.

The announcement of the pledge comes as President Donald Trump is attempting to paint Biden as a “puppet of the radical left.” His campaign has spent at least $14 million on a misleading ad claiming that police would be defunded under a Biden administration. The former vice president came out against defunding police almost as soon as it gained prominence.

Last week, a DNC committee released a draft platform that did not include support for Medicare for All or other top progressive priorities such as a jobs guarantee or the “Green New Deal,” despite Sanders aides’ efforts to include them as planks. Organizers are going public with the Medicare for All pledge now in part because they hope to influence the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, which is taking up the agenda on Monday. Whitmer said activists successfully persuaded a member of the panel to submit an amendment to back single-payer.

The pledge by delegates to vote against a platform without Medicare for All represents something of a split over strategy between Sanders and his most passionate supporters. After moderates accused him of failing to do everything he could to persuade his supporters to back Clinton in 2016 — a charge he vehemently denied — the Vermont senator has taken multiple steps to bring the Democratic Party together this cycle.

Sanders set up “unity” task forces with Biden, which released recommendations earlier this month. Progressives successfully pushed Biden’s allies to move left on certain issues, such as climate change, immigration and a no-deductible public option for health care. But they failed to persuade moderates on the task forces to back legalizing marijuana, end “qualified immunity,” or embrace single-payer.

Sanders aides again tried to push centrists on the DNC’s draft committee to get behind Medicare for All, but failed to do so. However, they did manage to insert a nod to single-payer in the platform.

“Generations of Democrats have been united in the fight for universal health care. We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach; all are critical to ensuring that health care is a human right,” the draft states.

But some progressive activists were unimpressed, pointing to the more than 5 million people that liberal advocacy group Families USA said have lost their health insurance between February and May because of the coronavirus.

“Democrats who understand the profound need for Medicare for All don’t want a pat on the head,” Solomon said. “We want a genuine political commitment to health care as a human right. Biden hasn’t gotten there.”

More news, tweets, videos, analysis in the comments section!