Mixed Bag Platform Draft Sets Stage for Fight at DNC Convention

Final Democratic Party platform draft contains wins on minimum wage and death penalty, losses on TPP and fracking

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

The final draft of the Democratic Party's 2016 platform, released Friday, calls for an end to the death penalty, a $15 minimum wage, the establishment of a postal banking system, broad marijuana law reform, and elimination of tax breaks for Big Oil—all victories for Bernie Sanders and his supporters—but fails to include key concessions on trade, Israel-Palestine, or fracking.

Indeed, not only does the document (pdf) fail to endorse a national fracking ban, as climate activists and Sanders are demanding, but "the platform puts the party on record in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan and the goal of '100 percent clean electricity,'" writes David Weigel for the Washington Post. "That plan and that goal assume that fracking will continue."