 So I've said this before but I think it's worth restating that I don't believe that the Democratic Party's national platform is very important. Like if they say they support policy X, they're not legally bound to fight for said policy if they do in fact get elected. This is basically them stating their intent to advocate for this policy in the short term or the long term. But it's not a guarantee that if they endorse a particular policy, we get that policy, right? So it's symbolic. So having said that, they couldn't even give the left symbolic victories that would have made the left more enthusiastic to support Joe Biden and Kamala Harrison theory. I mean they voted down legalized weed. Medicare for all overwhelmingly couldn't even give us a symbolic victory. They could say, look, we are at a national level. We're endorsing pot legalization and Medicare for all. We can't promise that you're going to get these things in the short term but long term. This is where we're headed. This is what we want. This is the goal of the party. Couldn't even give us that. So if they can't even give us that symbolic victory, then I think that the bare minimum that we should expect from progressive lawmakers is to also deny them a progressive victory. Vote against this platform if it doesn't contain what you want because believe it or not, you don't have to go along with every single thing the Democratic Party does, right? If you are a progressive lawmaker and you're in the Democratic Party, you can vote against this platform if it isn't to your liking. And luckily, we have some progressive lawmakers who are doing just that. So Ro Khanna, progressive lawmaker from California announced on Twitter, he will not be supporting the Democratic Party's platform tweeting out universal healthcare was part of the Democratic Party platform until 1980. The 2020 platform proposes lowering the Medicare age to 60, worse than 2016. Moving away from a profit-based healthcare system is the moral issue of our time. I'm voting no. Now additionally, Rashida Tlaib also stated she'll be voting no, saying, Today I cast my DNC ballot and voted no on the proposed platform. I constantly hear from constituents demanding we push for a single-payer system and away from this for-profit system that is leading people to suffer and die just because they cannot afford healthcare. As a party, we must push for a future where every resident has the ability to thrive. That means we need a platform that works to rid our society of oppression and greed. Unfortunately, in my view, this platform does not do enough. Now Corey Bush, who will be going to Congress in 2021, stated, I cast my DNC ballot this week. I'm proud to have voted for Bernie Sanders, but I had to vote against the platform. My people are dying and I cannot support a platform that does not include Medicare for All, which would save lives. Tens of thousands of lives, literally. She then followed up saying I am a Sanders delegate. I followed the DNC rules. Period. Now, to my knowledge, no other progressives had actually stated their intent to vote against the party platform. I could be missing them, but it seems like these are the only people who are saying unequivocally, I can't support this platform if it doesn't have Medicare for All. Now, Pramila Jayapal and AOC, I get that they're in a bit more of an awkward position because they were appointed by Bernie Sanders to be on the Joe Biden Bernie Sanders Unity Task Forces. And so they came up with policy positions. So maybe they feel as if they're making some, you know, headway or some progress with Joe Biden, except the actual process where they crafted the platform and voted on it, that took place separately, right? That was a different process than the Unity Task Force. So it's not weird for them. It's not like they're voting against the platform that they helped craft. So it would be nice to have all progressives just be unified here and say, we can't support this platform because it doesn't support Medicare for All. And again, I don't want to overstate the importance of this because at the end of the day, the platform itself isn't very important. Like it's not the most important battle that we should be having. But as I said, it's the bare minimum that we should expect from progressives, right? If you get elected to Congress by the left, then we should expect that you're not going to go along with this platform that doesn't include Medicare for All. I mean, before the pandemic, 68,000 people were dying every single year due to a lack of health care. And now after the pandemic, people are getting hundreds of thousands worth of bills if they get COVID-19. So are we just going to go along with a party that says we're not going to help those people out? We shouldn't. We can vote against it. We can send a message to the party if we're lawmakers and say, I'm not going to go along with that. If you don't support Medicare for All, I don't support your platform. There's really no risk. Again, it's symbolic. The party knows it's symbolic. It doesn't matter at the end of the day. So I'm not mad at anyone who didn't vote against the platform. And I don't know. Maybe the list is, you know, bigger than this. These are the only people that I found that spoke out. But I mean, we shouldn't expect that everything the party does will be tacitly endorsed by progressive lawmakers. We need people like Jamal Bowman and Ilhan Omar, all to say unequivocally, we have to have Medicare for All. And if the party doesn't give us this, we will fight them. We will resist the party, right? And everyone is kind of on edge within the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders included. They don't want to say anything negative towards Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. They're tap dancing around the inconvenient fact that he doesn't support Medicare for All because I get it. Trump needs to be defeated. Okay. But we can't lie to ourselves. We can't pretend as if everything is going to be PT keen if we oust Donald Trump. The party is nowhere near where the American people are. They're nowhere near where they should be. Maybe they've made progress in some areas with regard to the minimum wage. It seems as if the National Party is on board with 15. Great. But guess what? We've got to push them further because now 15, we've been fighting for that for what? Five years now? 10 years now? So now we need to ask for 20. We should never, ever, ever just tell them that the work is done on any issue, even on areas where they've made progress. Because there's so much that needs to be done that if we do not address the underlying issues that led to the rise of Donald Trump, if we don't stop the hemorrhaging, the deaths that's happening in this country, then I mean the situation isn't going to improve. So at a minimum, I want more progressives to be vocal and stand up against the Democratic Party, especially if it's something that really is, it's low cost, right? You're making a statement. You're saying, I don't support this platform, but I mean, that's not going to lead to you not getting a committee assignment. And again, who knows, you know, how many others actually voted against the platform, but I would like to see all of them really in unison come together as progressive lawmakers and say, we're all standing by one another and we're rejecting this platform because we unequivocally support Medicare for All and believe it's a necessity. So it'd be nice to see that. But at least, you know, these lawmakers, they really, they did a great job at speaking out because this is really important. Like this is, as Ro Khanna put it, the moral question of our time. If you're okay with thousands of Americans dying every single year because they don't have healthcare, then I don't know what to say. Like if you're okay with that, if that sits well with you, you're just a bad person.