1. “Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement … on Day One.” Even many on the left agree that the Paris Climate Agreement does little to slow climate change. It is a symbolic commitment by the rest of the world to reduce emissions, while most of the burden falls on the United States. Our economy has reduced emissions anyway on its own, thanks to the shift to natural gas and the advent of fracking technology, which the left hates and wants to phase out over time.
2. Shift the entire “fleet of 500,000 school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives” in five years. This is among the more wild-eyed proposals in the platform’s climate change section. It is not clear who will produce these buses (presumably to run on battery power), or what is to be done with half a million currently functional buses that run on ordinary fuel, and how local school districts are meant to afford the cost. The platform provides no further details.
3. “End cash bail.” The platform calls for eliminating cash bail across the country — a radical experiment in criminal justice reform that has only just begun in California and New York, with results that are deeply concerning. The idea is to reduce inequities, but in practice the end of cash bail means releasing violent criminals to commit more crimes. One suspect in antisemitic attacks in New York City late last year, for example, was repeatedly re-arrested after her releases.
4. “Stop the practice of arresting children for behavior that ought to be handled in the principal’s office.” The Democrats want to stop what they call the “school-to-prison pipeline,” arguing students of color suffer disproportionate suspensions and arrests (which would mean that liberal teachers are racist). But as Andrew Pollack points out, failing to arrest violent children could allow them to buy guns as adults, which is how the Parkland, Florida, shooting happened.
5. “We will repeal so-called ‘right to work’ laws.” It is not clear how Democrats will actually do this, since these laws are made at the state level. But “right to work” laws — freeing employees from being forced to join unions — have been a huge economic boost to states that have adopted them. Working-class Americans — especially minorities — have voted with their feet, moving from the highly unionized Rust Belt to the “right to work” South, where there are more jobs.
6. “Democrats will recognize unions with majority sign-up—via so-called ‘card check’ processes.” The “card check” violates the right to a secret ballot, and allows organizers to intimidate workers into voting to certify unions. The idea is so radical that even George McGovern, the left-wing Democratic presidential nominee in 1972 who lost to President Richard Nixon in a landslide, came out against it the last time Democrats tried to mandate it, in 2009.
7. “Oppose private school vouchers.” There is growing support for school vouchers that allow students to escape failing public schools in their local districts by choosing alternative schools — including private and religious schools. Vouchers are especially popular with minority families, who are desperate to escape the failing system in which the teachers’ unions have trapped their children. Democrats also want to restrict the expansion of charter schools, too.
8. Provide a “public option” toward universal health care. This idea was so radical ten years ago that Democrats left it out of Obamacare. But it is the beginning of “Medicare for All,” which Sanders wants to impose on everyone, and Biden wants to offer as a choice (for now). There is no thought of achieving universal health care outside government, building on the recent reforms under the Trump administration, such as tele-medicine — just more federal bureaucracy.
9. End the border wall and “provide a roadmap to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers.” A Biden administration would stop the construction of the “unnecessary, wasteful, and ineffective wall on the southern border” — thus allowing an open border — while also giving voting citizenship to the eleven million-plus illegal aliens who are already here, permanently changing the American electorate and enshrining Democrats in power forever.
