Tuesday, May 24, 2016

A small concession to Bernie

Robert Reich
5.23.2016

This just in: Bernie will name 5 members of the 15-person Democratic Platform Committee, Hillary Clinton will name 6 members, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz will name 4. The platform will be presented at the party convention in July.

Since DNC rules allow the chair to pick the entire slate of 15, this is something of a concession to Bernie. That may help overcome some of the divisiveness. But as a practical matter, since Wasserman Schultz and Hillary Clinton represent essentially the same interests, Bernie gets a third of the platform writing committee -- which isn't enough to make the platform bigger or more ambitious than Clinton wants.

Which raises a larger point that I'll be discussing at greater length in coming weeks. If Hillary is the nominee, she needs to think far bigger than she's now thinking. Her policy proposals are far too small and incremental, given the large and growing economic problems facing the middle class and the poor.

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