BOSTON - The Democratic Party platform that will be adopted tonight will include one particularly significant change from the platforms adopted by the party conventions of 1992, 1996 and 2000.
During the platform-writing process, the drafting committee quietly removed the section of the document that endorsed capital punishment.
Thus, for the first time since the 1980s, Democrats will not be campaigning on a pro-death penalty program.
Why the change?
Simply put, on the question of execution, John Kerry is a very different Democrat from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Clinton and Gore, while surely aware that capital punishment is an ineffective and racially and economically biased vehicle for fighting crime, were willing to embrace it as a political tool. Clinton even rushed back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded inmate. With Clinton and Gore steering the party's policies, Democratic platforms endorsed capital punishment.
But Clinton and Gore are no longer at the helm. And as of tonight, the party will no longer be on record as supporting the death penalty. Asked about the removal of the pro-capital punishment language, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs the committee that drafted the document, explained that "it's a reflection of John Kerry."
Kerry, who is often accused of flip-flopping by his Republican critics, is made of firmer stuff than most politicians when it comes to the issue of capital punishment. He opposes executions in virtually all cases - making an exception only after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when he said he would consider supporting capital punishment, in limited cases, for foreign terrorists.
On the domestic front, Kerry has earned high marks from death penalty critics. Last fall, when the Students Against the Death Penalty project of the American Civil Liberties Union rated the nine candidates who were then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination on a variety of death penalty-related issues, Kerry and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich were the only two who received perfect scores.
...Still, the death penalty remains a divisive issue. Not since 1988 has either major party nominated a critic of capital punishment for the presidency. The 1988 Democratic nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was attacked by that year's Republican nominee, George Herbert Walker Bush, for opposing the death penalty.
Whether Kerry will face similar attacks from Bush's son, who is an enthusiastic backer and frequent practitioner of state-sponsored executions, remains to be seen. But the volatility of the issue may explain why Democrats have been so quiet about the shift in platform language.
It is notable, however, that, in addition to Kerry's home state of Massachusetts, 11 other states bar executions. Among them are a number of the battleground states that could decide the November election, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Maine and West Virginia.
posted by Mike @ 5:49 PM
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