Mesa Mayor John Giles, co-chair of the Arizona chapter of Republicans for Harris, addresses the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024. (Photo by Kelechukwu Iruoma/Cronkite News)
CHICAGO – Former President Donald Trump has driven some Republicans out of his party. Democrats have spent the week offering them a new home.
They have toned down progressive language in their platform. At the Democratic National Convention, they have framed Trump as an extremist and deployed disaffected Republicans to encourage others to defect to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“John McCain’s Republican Party is gone,” Mesa Mayor John Giles, who co-chairs the Arizona chapter of Republicans for Harris, said from the convention stage, invoking the late senator known for working across party lines. “Let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first.”
Giles described Harris and the Democratic Party as a refuge for the “politically homeless.”
Like many Republicans, he said before his speech, he disagrees with the vice president on abortion, border policy and lots of other issues, but she’s far more likely than Trump to stay focused on the needs of the nation’s center.
And Democrats have sought to broaden their appeal in a number of ways this summer. They’ve walked back some of the progressive policies they championed four years ago, pivoting in their updated platform to moderate language that is more palatable for independents.
In 2020, the Democratic platform devoted eight pages to health care, outlining a plan for “Universal, Affordable, Quality Health Care,” with a public coverage option. The plan calls for pressuring private insurers to broaden access and lower costs, and for automatic coverage for low-income Americans even in states that refuse to participate.
Unlike the 2020 platform, the version the party adopted this week in Chicago makes no mention of universal health care – an idea that invites allegations of radicalism and wealth redistribution.
With the priority of “Reducing Costs,” it does echo previous calls to reduce the costs of prescription drugs, boost access to Medicaid, the program for lower-income Americans, and protect the Affordable Care Act – “Obamacare” – from GOP efforts to dismantle it.
The 2020 platform called for police reform and a “top to bottom” overhaul of the criminal justice system, asserting that Black and Latino communities are “overpoliced and underserved” by a system that has effectively “criminalized poverty.”
After years of GOP accusations that they want to “defund the police,” Democrats retooled to refute that line of attack.
“We need to fund the police, not defund the police,” the newest platform says, lauding President Joe Biden for reducing crime by sending billions of dollars to local law enforcement.
“This is not about Democrats or Republicans or independents,” Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, co-chair of the Democratic platform committee, said on a call with reporters. “It’s about everyday, working class folk.”
Republicans who have stuck with their party deem the shift to the center insincere.
Trump has called Democrats “radical left lunatics” and “communists.” On Thursday, ahead of a visit to the Arizona-Mexico border, he took to social media and accused “Comrade Kamala” of unleashing a “plague of migrant crime and migrant rape” on Americans.
Democrats have jabbed at Trump throughout the convention, painting him as an autocrat. They’ve used a comically large copy of Project 2025 – crafted by veterans of his administration – to stoke concerns about a second Trump term.
Trump has disavowed the blueprint, although his former White House budget director, Russell Vought, is a co-author and has said the former president is “supportive of what we do.” Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, wrote the foreword to a recent book by Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has overseen Project 2025.
“This is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said, slamming the book on the lectern.
In one of the many convention segments focused on Project 2025, Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson emceed a comedy sketch Wednesday night in which he deflated the hopes of five Americans by citing passages that threatened their livelihoods or freedoms.
The document, which tops 900 pages, spells out plans to raise taxes on the middle class while cutting taxes on the ultra-wealthy, fire thousands of civil servants who aren’t MAGA loyalists and vastly expand executive power. Trump’s official campaign platform, dubbed Agenda 47, tracks Project 2025 in many ways, including calls to eliminate the Department of Education and roll back environmental protections.
The Democrats’ platform committee approved its updated party platform on July 16 – five days before Biden dropped out.
Harris quickly emerged as the consensus successor and, according to Romero, the platform did not undergo any significant changes after that.
So, passages still extol Biden’s record and contrast his views with Trump’s. But for Democratic activists, the central point remains: their nominee will promote everyone’s interests, and Trump will not.
Said Tempe delegate Dhruv Rebba, “She stands for what the majority of Americans want.”
