Bernie Sanders is still spoiling for a convention fight.

It seemed like Democrats could finally claim unity when no member of the Democratic National Committee's 15-person convention drafting committee voted against the draft of the policy platform draft during a meeting in St. Louis this past weekend: 13 members of the panel voted for the draft, one abstained and one missed the vote. But since then, Sanders-aligned members have teed off on the draft for not going far enough in key areas.


While both neutral national Democrats and Hillary Clinton-aligned Democrats on the DNC standing committees have hailed the draft document — which is headed to a full vote before the 187-member platform committee on July 8 and 9 in Orlando, Florida — as both satisfactory and historically progressive, Sanders supporters insist the draft remains unpalatable. Among the issues they've identified: the platform draft's treatment of Medicare expansion, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a carbon tax, and a ban on fracking. Sanders and his allies are vowing to fight for changes in Orlando — and all the way to the convention in Philadelphia, if necessary.

"I will tell you that in some areas it clearly is a better document than in the past but I know that on TPP, I know that on the issue of healthcare for all, and fracking and the carbon tax at least those we will have minority planks," said James Zogby, a Sanders-aligned member of the drafting committee. There's agreement on the overarching ideas of the draft, Zogby said, but specific policy prescriptions are what's sparking the tension.

So far, Sanders and his team have locked up draft policy wins on language for abolishing the death penalty, expanding Social Security through raising the cap on how much Americans earning $250,000 or more pay to expand benefits, and breaking up the country's largest banks. But that's not everything on Sanders' lengthy priority list, so the senator and his allies are vowing to keep pushing hard.

While he admits that some gains are better than none at all, Sanders himself has already begun voicing his dissatisfaction. In an email to supporters on Thursday (titled "We're going to the convention") Sanders wrote that "we are going to take our political revolution into the halls of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia where we will fight to place a $15 minimum wage, opposition to TPP, and a ban on fracking directly into the Democratic Platform."

That email came one day after the campaign asked its supporters to sign a petition demanding language against TPP be included in the platform — a top Sanders priority.

"The most significant issue for us is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Clinton team has said there's absolutely no daylight between their position on TPP and ours," Sanders policy director Warren Gunnels said. "We want to make that clear in the Democratic Party platform. That the TPP should not receive a vote in the lame-duck session and beyond. We just sent out a petition to our supporters and the American people asking that they sign that petition in support of that amendment. That's what we're focused on right now. But I do want to emphasize that we won some very important victories."

Over the last week, Sanders allies and Clinton allies have traded barbs over whether the draft is truly a product of serious negotiating from both sides. Sanders drafting committee member Bill McKibben wrote an opinion piece for POLITICO arguing that the Clinton team "has been unwilling to commit to delivering specifics about fundamental change in America."

"The Clinton campaign is at this point rhetorically committed to taking on our worst problems, but not willing to say how," McKibben wrote. "Which is the slightly cynical way politicians have addressed issues for too long—and just the kind of slickness that the straightforward Sanders campaign rejected."

Sanders and his allies point to areas like climate change as examples of the Clinton team's unwillingness to commit to specifics.

"Look, Bernie's push on a lot of things, especially climate, has been: we need to go faster and do more. And in this case, not because it would be a good and moral and smart thing to do, but because it's physically necessary. Because, ice caps," McKibben wrote in an email Thursday.

In response to the POLITICO article, Clinton-aligned drafting committee member Carol Browner dismissed those criticisms as "absurd."

"This is a platform that will make history," she wrote. "Which is why it was so disappointing to see other members of our committee accusing the Clinton campaign of obstructionism — and claiming we did not approach the climate crisis as seriously as we should. In both cases, nothing could be further from the truth."

Browner declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, the National Nurses United super PAC backing Sanders released a statement bashing the platform draft for failing to include language vowing to fight for "Medicare for all."

"The committee has turned its back on tens of millions of Americans who continue to have no health coverage, or who are paying for health insurance they cannot use because of the prohibitive out of pocket costs," RoseAnn DeMoro, the super PAC's executive director, said in a statement.

Other Democrats argue that the platform draft may not be perfect but it's not nearly as flawed as critics maintain. On Monday, California Rep. Barbara Lee, one of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's picks for the drafting committee and a former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement that while the draft isn't perfect, it's "truly progressive."

Asked if the draft in its current shape should satisfy liberals, Ohio state Rep. Alicia Reese pointed to the fact that even the Sanders-members on the drafting committee voted for it.

"They voted for it. The Sanders appointees voted for it, along with the Clinton appointees and the DNC appointees. So I think that answers your question," Reese said Thursday.

Throughout the process, liaisons from both the Sanders team and the Clinton team worked to hammer out as much agreement as possible. Gunnels was in constant contact with Clinton counterpart Maya Harris over email, phone and meetings during the drafting committee negotiations. Andrew Grossman, the executive director of the drafting committee, also kept tabs on the negotiations. He recently held a meeting with outside groups such as as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and EMILY's List to walk them through how to push their policy priorities throughout the drafting process.

"There was a lot of negotiation behind the scenes to try to work together and come back with something," Reese said of those talks.

Even so, Sanders' team is vowing to fight on. When the draft is considered by the DNC platform committee next week, Sanders will look to the 72 members who support him to push amendments to alter it.

"If we don't win on some of these amendments what will need to happen is there will need to be at least 40 members voting for those amendments and the same 40 members will also have to file a minority vote and that would give us an opportunity to take that minority vote to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia," Gunnels said. "So that is the process. It doesn't ultimately guarantee a vote, it just gives us the option to do that."

Sanders made clear this week that he's willing to take his fight beyond Orlando if his concerns aren't adequately addressed.

"I am going to do everything I can to rally support in Orlando for our amendment opposing the TPP," Sanders wrote in the email introducing the TPP petition. "But I want to be clear that if we fail there we are going to take this fight to the floor of the Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia next month."

"I believe it'll go all the way to Philadelphia," DeMoro said in a interview on Thursday. "I think there will be amendments on the floor [in Philadelphia] and I'm sure we will be able to compel some amendments to pass."