As thousands of delegates flock to Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention (DNC), much of the public will be watching to see how the Democratic Party makes its case for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. One theme, already a popular talking point on the campaign trail, popped up repeatedly on the DNC’s first night: This race, according to the Democrats, is between a “prosecutor and a convicted felon.”
Activists have urged the Harris campaign to drop this framing, which stigmatizes incarcerated people more than it harms Donald Trump. It is clear that Democrats don’t plan to change course any time soon. Meanwhile, delegates at the DNC are set to vote on a new Democratic platform that signals that the party’s embrace of carceral thought goes beyond a simple campaign slogan.
Released August 18, the 2024 platform evinces a disturbing rightward lurch for the Democrats on immigration and policing. In a stark tonal shift from its 2020 agenda, the Democratic Party has quietly caved in to right-wing fearmongering about crime and public safety.
The Democrats released their 2020 platform in August of that year. The nation had erupted in mass protests for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, and the document is a clear product of a time in which police brutality, systemic racism, and the injustice of the criminal legal system were at the forefront of the national conversation. The Democrats’ proposed policies were rather diluted compared to the demands of the protests, but the language was nevertheless far stronger than what the 2024 platform is offering now.
In a section titled “Protecting Communities and Building Trust by Reforming Our Criminal Justice System,” in 2020, Democrats explicitly stated their belief in a “need to overhaul” the criminal legal system “from top to bottom,” and wrote, “police brutality is a stain on the soul of our nation.” The platform called for an end to mass incarceration and uplifted increased funding for public services — not policing — as a way to get there.
“Instead of making evidence-based investments in education, jobs, health care, and housing that are proven to keep communities safe and prevent crime from occurring in the first place, our system has criminalized poverty, overpoliced and underserved Black and Latino communities, and cut public services,” the Democrats wrote. Instead of “turning to police,” the Democrats called for an increase of funding to school guidance counselors, nurses and psychologists.
It is now abundantly clear that these modest proposals — already limited in scope, lagging behind the demands of many activists and the party’s left flank — were little more than political lip service. In fact, the 2020 Democratic Party platform could only look downright radical when placed next to this year’s document.
The Democrats have, with this platform, taken a reactionary approach, responding to attacks by reinscribing their position as a staunchly carceral, pro-police party.
The shift in priorities is clear from the jump: criminal legal reform no longer has its own chapter. The framing is instead around the more general task of “Protecting Communities.” There is no mention of ending either “mass incarceration” or “police brutality.”
Under the bullet point “Policing & Public Safety,” the Democrats are quick to dispel any illusions that the party might be even mildly critical of police, starting off the section by applauding officers for their sacrifices. The platform emphasizes that President Biden has, in fact, been working to increase the number of police officers on the street. Lest we were still unclear about where the party stands, the platform states outright: “We need to fund the police, not defund the police.”
This language is clearly an attempt to shake the image, painted by the GOP, that Democrats are “soft on crime.” Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have repeatedly claimed that calls to “defund the police,” which became a policy demand of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, have led to a scourge of violent crime sweeping the nation. This is patently false. Few cities followed through on initial proposals to cut police spending, and in fact, many cities and counties actually increased funding to their police departments. Following a pandemic-era bump, violent crime rates are dropping across the country. And, of course, mainstream Democrats never supported the “defund” movement to begin with — let alone the abolitionist politics the movement came from.
“I don’t support defunding the police,” Biden said in a June 2020 CBS interview. “I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.”
Rather than seek to dispel bad-faith misinformation disseminated by the far right or embrace a truly justice-driven agenda, the Democrats have, with this platform, taken a reactionary approach, responding to attacks by reinscribing their position as a staunchly carceral, pro-police party. And they take a similarly disappointing approach to immigration.
“We will protect and expand the existing asylum system,” Democrats pledged in 2020. “Democrats will end Trump Administration policies that deny protected entry to asylum seekers, put them at great risk, and destabilize our neighbors and the broader region.”
Of course, the Democrats did not expand the asylum system, and President Biden actually instated on a ban on asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border that mirrored Donald Trump’s policy. The 2024 platform is proud to tout this as an achievement, even as the head of the UN refugee agency warns the policy might violate international law: “After Congress repeatedly failed to act, President Biden announced executive action that significantly curtailed asylum eligibility at the border when crossings reach a certain threshold and strengthened our ability to impose timely consequences for crossing the border illegally.”
This year’s platform also notes that “those who attempt to cross into the United States unlawfully are being quickly returned to their home countries, as well as Mexico” — the same home countries which Democrats themselves noted, four years prior, could put migrants “at great risk.”
The harsher approach to immigration displayed in the 2024 platform arrives as Trump and his allies hammer the Biden administration for its “open borders” policy. At the Republican National Convention last month, speakers repeatedly spewed anti-immigrant vitriol. “Joe and Kamala, they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists,” said former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro in one speech.
These claims are rooted in racism and fear, not reality. The United States does not have open borders, nor is there any evidence that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than U.S. citizens. But once again, the Democratic Party platform takes a defensive approach, underscoring its plans to crack down on immigration, as if there could potentially be any credibility to the far right’s claims.
It is highly troubling that in a time of rising extremism and blatant fearmongering, as Republican-led state legislatures pass draconian bills cracking down on civil liberties, the Democratic Party is embracing its own carceral agenda. We should pay close attention to what happens next.
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