Unlike the Republican platform, the Democratic platform firmly supports a woman’s right to choose abortion. After that, the Dems offer just a trifle more than the GOP. Instead of an explicit commitment to universal health care, the platform promises “affordable” opportunities for insuring children, widening the scope of Medicare coverage to include prescription drugs, and opening up Medicaid to help people kicked off welfare. Elsewhere, hewing to the Democratic Leadership Council’s fetish for technical detail, the platform proceeds in tiny increments.
Major points:
Pro new tax incentives to assist individuals in setting up private IRA-type retirement funds to supplement Social Security, a move that would be a bonanza for Wall Street but have no real effect on the working poor–who have been losing income during the Clinton boom.
Instead of uniform gun registration, the platform calls for kid locks on new handguns and background checks, but says nothing about existing guns. And nothing about assault weapons, whose import from China was okayed by Clinton and Gore.