This post first appeared at Com­mon Dreams.

"When you’re on the edge of the abyss or when you’re on that stove, to use the language of Malcolm X, you don’t use the language of incrementalism. It hurts, and the species is hurting," Cornel West said.

Despite its claims to want to uni­fy vot­ers ahead of Novem­ber’s elec­tion, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty appears to be push­ing for an agen­da that crit­ics say ignores basic pro­gres­sive poli­cies, ​“stay­ing true” to their Cor­po­rate donors above all else.

Dur­ing a 9‑hour meet­ing in St. Louis, Mis­souri on Fri­day, mem­bers of the DNC’s plat­form draft­ing com­mit­tee vot­ed down a num­ber of mea­sures pro­posed by Bernie Sanders sur­ro­gates that would have come out against the con­tentious Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP), frack­ing, and the Israeli occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine. At the same time, pro­pos­als to sup­port a car­bon tax, Sin­gle Pay­er health­care, and a $15 min­i­mum wage tied to infla­tion were also disregarded.

In a state­ment, Sanders said he was ​“dis­ap­point­ed and dis­mayed” that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Hillary Clin­ton and DNC chair­woman Deb­bie Wasser­man Schulz reject­ed the pro­pos­al on trade put forth by Sanders appointee Rep. Kei­th Elli­son (D‑Minn.), despite the fact that the pre­sumed nom­i­nee has her­self come out against the 12-nation deal.

“Inex­plic­a­ble” was how Sanders described the move, adding: ​“It is hard for me to under­stand why Sec­re­tary Clinton’s del­e­gates won’t stand behind Sec­re­tary Clinton’s posi­tions in the party’s platform.”

The pan­el also reject­ed amend­ments sug­gest­ed by 350​.org co-founder Bill McK­ibben, anoth­er Sanders pick, that would have imposed a car­bon tax, declared a nation­al mora­to­ri­um on frack­ing as well as new fos­sil fuel drilling leas­es on fed­er­al lands and waters.

“This is not a polit­i­cal prob­lem of the sort that we are used to deal­ing with,” McK­ibben stat­ed dur­ing the marathon debate. ​“Most polit­i­cal prob­lems yield well to the for­mu­la that we’ve kept adopt­ing on thing after thing — com­pro­mise, we’ll go halfway, we’ll get part of this done. That’s because most polit­i­cal prob­lems are real­ly between dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple. They’re between indus­try and envi­ron­men­tal­ists. That is not the case here.”

“For­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Howard Berman, Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­ty, and Munci­pal Employ­ees exec­u­tive assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, Paul Booth, for­mer White House Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy direc­tor Car­ol Brown­er, Ohio State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ali­cia Reece, for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cial Wendy Sher­man, and Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress Pres­i­dent Neera Tanden all raised their hands to pre­vent a mora­to­ri­um from becom­ing a part of the plat­form,” not­ed Shad­ow­proof​’s Kevin Gosztola.

Accord­ing to Gosz­to­la’s report­ing on the exchange, Dr. Cor­nel West lam­bast­ed the afore­men­tioned pan­el mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly Brown­er, for ​“endors­ing reform incre­men­tal­ism” in the face of an urgent plan­e­tary crisis.

“When you’re on the edge of the abyss or when you’re on that stove, to use the lan­guage of Mal­colm X, you don’t use the lan­guage of incre­men­tal­ism. It hurts, and the species is hurt­ing,” West said.

Oth­er pro­gres­sive poli­cies were adopt­ed piece­meal, such as the $15 min­i­mum wage, which the com­mit­tee accept­ed but with­out the amend­ment put forth by Elli­son that would have indexed the wage to inflation.

The pan­el did vote unan­i­mous­ly to back a pro­pos­al to abol­ish the death penal­ty and adopt­ed lan­guage call­ing for break­ing up too-big-to-fail banks and enact­ing a mod­ern-day Glass-Stea­gall Act — mea­sures that Sanders said he was ​“pleased” about.

Accord­ing to AP, the final dis­cus­sion ​“cen­tered on the Israel-Pales­tin­ian conflict.”

“The com­mit­tee defeat­ed an amend­ment by Sanders sup­port­er James Zog­by that would have called for pro­vid­ing Pales­tini­ans with ​‘an end to occu­pa­tion and ille­gal set­tle­ments’ and urged an inter­na­tion­al effort to rebuild Gaza,” AP reports, mea­sures which Zog­by said Sanders helped craft.

Instead, AP reports, the adopt­ed draft ​“advo­cates work­ing toward a ​‘two-state solu­tion of the Israel-Pales­tin­ian con­flict’ that guar­an­tees Israel’s secu­ri­ty with rec­og­nized bor­ders ​‘and pro­vides the Pales­tini­ans with inde­pen­dence, sov­er­eign­ty, and dignity.’”

Cit­ing these ​“moral fail­ures” of the plat­form draft, West abstained dur­ing the final vote to send the doc­u­ment to review by the full Plat­form Com­mit­tee next month in Orlan­do, Florida.

“If we can’t say a word about TPP, if we can’t talk about Medicare-for-All explic­it­ly, if they great­est prophet­ic voice deal­ing with pend­ing eco­log­i­cal­ly cat­a­stro­phe can hard­ly win a vote, and if we can’t even acknowl­edge occu­pa­tion… it seems there is no way in good con­science I can say, ​‘Take it to the next stage,’” West declared before the assembly.

“I was­n’t raised like that,” he said. ​“I have to abstain. I have no oth­er moral option, it would be a vio­la­tion of my own lim­it­ed sense of moral integri­ty and spir­i­tu­al con­science,” adding, ​“That’s how I roll.”