 So last week, the left and progressives got a little bit of a pat on the head by the official Democratic Party when in a draft version of their official party platform, they gave a nod to Medicare for All apparently. Now, while the platform itself doesn't explicitly endorse Medicare for All, I think some view this as a victory for the left because it's a signal of what's to come. Maybe they don't support Medicare for All right now, but it shows that we're headed towards that path of Medicare for All. I for one do not see this as a victory because Medicare for All to me isn't something that I view as a long term goal. It's not, you know, encouraging to see that maybe sometime down the line Democrats will be willing to give us Medicare for All. It's a necessity right now. This is not something that we are aspiring to in 10 or 20 years. This is something that we need right now as we live through a pandemic. And the fact that the party is giving Medicare for All a nod means nothing to me. I don't want a nod. I don't even want an endorsement of the policy. I want the policy codified into law. I want it right now. And I'm not willing to accept anything less than Medicare for All. And when you consider the fact that their nominee, Joe Biden, has been openly hostile towards Medicare for All and literally ran an ad suggesting that his dead son would be insulted to have Medicare for All. I don't think that we should take this as a victory even if it's just a moral victory. The victory is getting Medicare for All, period, full stop. And thankfully a lot of people agree with me. Important people, delegates, for example, who are planning to rebel if the party does not officially endorse Medicare for All in their 2020 platform. And as Holly Otterbeen of Politico reports, a revolt is brewing among Bernie Sanders delegates three weeks from the Democratic National Convention. More than 360 delegates, most of whom back Sanders, have signed onto a pledge to vote against the Democratic Party's platform if it does not include support for Medicare for All, the petition's organizers told Politico. They argue that single-payer health care is an urgent priority amid a worldwide pandemic and the biggest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. This pandemic has shown us that our private health insurance system does not work for the American people. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their health care at the same time, said Judith Whitmer, a Sanders delegate and chair of the convention's Nevada delegation, who helped spearhead the pledge. There's people leaving the hospital right now with millions of dollars in medical bills. What are we going to do about that? The warning is all but certain to set up a clash between Sanders' most dedicated supporters and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who opposes Medicare for All at a time when the party is seeking to demonstrate unity ahead of its August convention. Though the petition's signers have little chance of revising the platform to include Medicare for All support, they do have the numbers to draw attention to their protest and cause. It is also likely to trigger fears among Democratic leaders about a repeat of the 2016 convention when the party's divides were on public display as Sanders supporters booed the mention of Hillary Clinton, the left-wing groups Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction.org are announcing Monday that they support the vow to vote against the platform if it doesn't include Medicare for All. The Bernie Delegates Network, a coalition made up of hundreds of Sanders delegates, said it will also publicize the petition. Organizers expect efforts will net hundreds more signatures, including from Biden delegates. I would be shocked there if you got more than a dozen Biden delegates, but, nonetheless, there's one more paragraph that I want to share with you, which I think is crucial because I think you can already anticipate the response. They're going to say, oh, well, how dare these Bernie delegates do this? I mean, Donald Trump could be re-elected. Why would you want to, you know, divide the party at a time when we're all supposed to come together? But this is their answer, and I think this is really important. Organizers also said they are not being divisive. Rather, it's the party leaders who are overruling the grassroots who are being divisive, they argued. They point to exit polls showing that majorities of Democratic primary voters across states are in favor of Medicare for All. That's exactly it. When most people in the country and the party support Medicare for All, it's not the people who want the policy who are the ones being divisive. It's the rulers. It's leadership who are doing the dividing if they're not getting on board with what everyone else wants and public opinion polls that only bolsters our argument. But if Medicare for All is the one policy that will give 100% of the population healthcare, then I don't even care what the polls say. You do what is right. But I mean, the fact that we have to fight them on this during a pandemic is extremely frustrating and they're most likely will be a rebellion because as this article came out just hours after actually, Bernie delegates officially proposed an amendment to the platform committee to adopt Medicare for All and it was voted down overwhelmingly with 125 no votes to only 36 yes votes. So yeah, this is going to be a rebellion that's in full swing and I unequivocally supported. Because look, think about this. Let's say that this rebellion was successful and they didn't adopt the platform. That would be important. It would send a really huge message to the establishment. But even if the Democratic Party chose to include support for Medicare for All explicitly in their platform, their party platform, like Party Manifestos, these are non-binding documents. So it doesn't actually matter even if they say our official position is Medicare for All. That doesn't mean that we're going to get it. So it would be a symbolic victory but they can't even give the left a symbolic victory. It's constantly the middle finger up 100% of the time letting you know that they refuse to support this life-saving policy. They're okay with people dying. If you don't have healthcare or if you get COVID-19 and you have insurance but it doesn't cover everything, then they're fine with you going bankrupt or dying. That's the position that they're taking and it's morally reprehensible. And what makes matters worse is that Joe Biden is trying to find ways to placate us when it comes to the issue of healthcare because he knows what we want. So what he's doing is he's trying to tell us what we want to hear while not actually giving us the policy we want. So for example, he stole the rhetoric of Medicare for All activists and he's tweeting out things like, oh, I believe healthcare is the right. And on top of that, he had the audacity to praise himself in a discussion with Obama about how wonderful the ACA is as the Republican Party has completely dismantled it and we need something more. Remember when Beau was toward the end and the only person I told the detail all the time was you because you had a right to know exactly what. And he only had months left to go and I used to sit there watching him in the bed in the pain and dying of glioblastoma and I thought to myself, what would happen if his insurance company was able to come in which they could have done before past Obamacare and said, you've outrun your insurance. You've outlived it. So for the last five months of your life in peace, you're on your own. All the things that it did, that it was so profound an impact on people, it was like it took them a while until they started to take it away to realize what was happening. Look, you and I both know what it's like to have somebody you love get really sick. And in some cases to lose somebody, but that loss is compounded when you see the stress on their faces because they're worried that they're being a burden on their families. They're worried about whether the insurance is gonna cover the treatments that they need. I couldn't be prouder of what we got done. 20 million people have health insurance that didn't have it because of what we did. Imagine promoting that video thinking that you're serious about healthcare. Unbelievable. Now to them, the reason why they're patting themselves on the back there is because success to them with regard to healthcare policy is how many people get health insurance, not healthcare itself, right? To them, if you get someone health insurance, good enough. Wash your hands. You're done. Now they say, look, we extended health coverage. More than 20 million people got insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Except you left 30 million out when you had a super majority and you could have gotten Medicare for all. Second of all, if someone has insurance and they bought it off of the Obamacare exchanges, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll have full healthcare because they're purchasing expensive insurance plans that are garbage. They're shitty, right? You might have insurance, but still not be able to get everything that you need. All of your healthcare needs are not automatically met if you have insurance. Like I just talked to my niece last week. She has insurance, so theoretically, she should be fine, right? Except she needs her tonsils removed immediately and she has to fight with her insurance company. So just because you have health insurance, that doesn't mean that you have healthcare. It's not a way to measure success. But to them, they know exactly what they did. They know where they went wrong, so they're trying to gaslight you and make you think that what they did was better than it was in actuality. And even what little gains the ACA made, which, I mean, it was better than nothing, sure, but it's all been dismantled by Republicans. It may not have been like a giant repeal that happened in one vote, but it's death by 1,000 cuts. They've been working to undermine the ACA since forever. And so you have to take it a step further. Now when you have people who support Medicare for All passionately, especially during a pandemic, for you to say I'm still not going to give that to you is unforgivable. It shows how they're just, they're not right for this moment. They don't understand what's needed right now. So, you know, I am looking forward to the ghouls saying, oh, look at these Bernie Democrats. All these delegates here who support Bernie Sanders, they're trying to hurt us. They're trying to help Donald Trump get reelected. You are helping Donald Trump get reelected. Anything short of full Medicare for All isn't just a betrayal to your voters, but it shows that you actually don't care about human beings because if you're okay with more and more people losing their health insurance and thus their health care, if you're fine with thousands of people dying every single year because they don't have health care, you are the one who's being divisive because you're on the wrong side of history and you're cruel. I'm sorry. We're the ones who are right, you're wrong. So if you're not on board and willing to meet us where we are with Medicare for All, you're the ones who are being divisive. So I absolutely applaud them even if this isn't going to amount to much. It's not going to lead to us getting Medicare for All. What they need to realize is that we're not going to stop fighting for Medicare for All. We're not just going to throw our hands up and say, well, Bernie lost, so I guess there's our chance. No, we will keep fighting you at every single step of the way because this is the right policy. It's not only the popular policy, but it's the right policy. So get on board.