[Peace-discuss] Democrats don't support Medicare for All

[J.B. Nicholson]

Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote:
> "Police should stop killing unarmed black people" is a concrete demand. You
> can tell whether we're making progress on it or not. You can easily think
> of concrete reforms that would contribute to it, and some of these reforms
> are happening in different places. Banning chokeholds. Licensing cops so
> abuser cops can't hop from department to department like abuser priests.
> Mandatory webcams. Mandatory public reporting on use of force statistics.
> Ending qualified immunity. These things are happening in some states. If
> Biden wins and Dems take the Senate, there's going to be sweeping national
> reform.

Where on Biden's website can we find this promise? My search for "site:biden2020.com 
police" (https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?kp=-2&q=site%3Abiden2020.com%20police) 
turned up no hits.

It did not appear to be true when Biden was Vice President; cops were killing unarmed 
black people then too. Why would he wait so long to put some better policy into 
action? Webcams and body cameras have been in use and now we have video of the 
killings but the killings continue.

If ending qualified immunity and other things you identified are happening now and 
we're supposed to tie this to the US President or national party policy, that would 
suggest we should vote Trump to keep that going in more states.

> Just in the last week, there was a fight in the Democratic Platform
> committee over Medicare for All. BernieBros were pushing Medicare for All.
> BLM was on the side of the BernieBros, demanding that Democrats fight for
> Medicare for All. BLM has a race-and-class analysis of why we need Medicare
> for All.

This one issue -- Medicare for All -- is so important (particularly during a 
pandemic) that I'd bet sincere and believable support for it alone could win someone 
the US presidency. But the Democrats don't distinguish themselves from the 
Republicans on this issue. BLM's website's front page doesn't make any mention of 
Medicare for All. When I look at the news footage from BLM marches I don't see people 
rallying around Medicare for All, taking that fight to the street.

The Democratic Party Platform is meaningless and apparently doesn't guide the policy 
of that party's nominee. This is pretty widely known. But even that PR document 
doesn't look good from reports so far:

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/democratic-platform-nixes-medicare-for-all/
> The Democratic Party platform aligns with Joe Biden's campaign promises, but
> almost 400 delegates to the convention wanted the promise of "Medicare for All"
> included. Legalizing marijuana is also not in the platform.

https://truthout.org/articles/dnc-platform-committee-votes-down-medicare-for-all-amendment/
> A Democratic National Committee panel on Monday voted down an amendment that would
> have inserted a plank supporting Medicare for All into the party’s 2020 platform,
> a move progressives decried as out of touch with public opinion and a slap in the
> face to the millions of people who have lost their health insurance due to the
> Covid-19 pandemic.
> 
> 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.


In reference to what Kaiser Health News (khn.org) said above: Biden has publicly 
promised to veto any Medicare for All bill that crossed his desk as POTUS. Therefore 
there's no reason to believe that he's more likely to fight for our public interest 
when he doesn't need our vote than now when he ostensibly wants our vote.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is a known opponent of Medicare for All. So 
a theoretical Pres. Biden would never get the chance to make good on his pledge for 
veto. Putting her in as a bulwark against Medicare for All also benefits all of the 
so-called progressives in the House (members of "The Squad", for instance) so they 
too never need to vote compatibly with their speeches supporting Medicare for All.

Bernie Sanders dropped support for his own Medicare for All Senate bill and Medicare 
for All in general when he dropped his 2020 campaign. He said "Let me be clear: I am 
not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into 
the future.". It's not clear when "the future" is. He also released a video statement 
saying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQV83U5Dk) around 41m44s he said "This is 
not Medicare for All, we can’t pass that right now.". Well, we could, but it would 
take a political will among the Democrats that doesn't exist.

Then we had the Sanders/Biden "task forces" which resulted in:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/biden-sanders-unity-task-force-recommendations-353225

> The task force recommendations don't include the kind of wide-scale systemic 
> upheaval that won Sanders such a fervent following in his two presidential 
> campaigns - while provoking an outcry from moderate Democrats and Republicans 
> alike. A single-payer health care system such as "Medicare for All," a "Green New 
> Deal" overhauling environmental policy, and doing away with Immigration and 
> Customs Enforcement are not among the policy proposals.
and 
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/889189235/democratic-task-forces-deliver-biden-a-blueprint-for-a-progressive-presidency

> Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal co-chaired the health care task force. She has 
> long pushed, like Sanders, for a single, government-run health insurance program 
> but didn't bring that recommendation to the table in any of the meetings or 
> negotiations.
Rep. Jayapal wrote the House Medicare for All bill which replaced the late John 
Conyers' (D-MI) Medicare for All bill (HR676). HR676 received much praise and a lot 
of co-signers (more than Jayapal's bill last time I looked) but also was never 
brought to the floor of the House for a vote (which is what really matters).