“This is not some rote exercise where we phone it in and a document gathers dust on a shelf,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz last week in Washington, convening the first of four sets of field hearings on the party platform, which will be approved at the convention in Philadelphia in July.

In a typical election year, you could assume that Wasserman Schultz was blowing smoke. Typically the party platform is a mere transposition of the victorious campaign’s existing promises, set in bland enough language to not pin them down on any particular issue. But the vigorous primary this year, and Bernie Sanders’s desire for a “fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party,” has made the 2016 platform unusually consequential.

Sanders made it clear last night just how much he and his “revolution” are staking on the platform debate. Prior to his summit with Hillary Clinton, he told a hastily assembled news conference he’d be pushing her for “the most progressive platform” ever passed at the party’s convention next month, along with reform of the nominating process.



Because of the unusually high stakes—and scrutiny—that’s come with Sanders’s focus on the platform, the hearings that continue this week in Phoenix (with St. Louis and Orlando to follow) have become a kind of public trial on the party’s future. If the first week’s hearings were any indication, stakeholders are signaling to Clinton that the party’s sins of the past will no longer be tolerated.

The left wing of the party has never been given more power to shape the platform. Sanders appointed five of the 15 members of the platform drafting committee, with six allotted to Hillary Clinton and the other four to the DNC. That’s a big variation from past practice: Clinton lost by a smaller margin to Barack Obama in 2008, and got zero slots on the platform committee.