Pol Dancing: Democratic Platform Tragically Light On Porn Policy

Which DNC Platform planks should lawyers care about? Joe Patrice has some suggestions...

Down in Charlotte, at the quadrennial “We Hate America” (spelled “Amercia”) Convention, the Communist Pander-Bears have released a 70-page Party Platform replete with dozens of references to specific pieces of legislation that no one necessarily understands to remind us of the scores of bills that the Democrats have failed to pass since 2008.

The Democrats don’t provide nearly as many bold changes to the legal structure of the country as the Republicans. But there are a few legal planks worth reviewing, though tragically little on the subject of porn. How dare they not respond to the strongest plank of the Republican platform?

I felt a little validated after last week when Pew Research Center released a poll showing that more Americans are interested in the party platforms than the speeches. That said, I’m not sure any of those people interested in platforms are willing to devote time to reading these often tedious documents. Unfortunately for me, I do this every election.

But this perceived importance of platforms represents a victory for the Democratic messaging machine, which spent the last couple of weeks trying to convince voters to focus on the Republican Party Platform because they understood, correctly, that the GOP platform would inevitably take a harder stance on abortion and birth control than Mitt Romney would personally take. The Democrats didn’t sabotage themselves, and wrote a platform that was basically cribbed from Obama policy statements, robbing us of a lot of fun.

Once again, let’s blow past the obvious revelations of the new platform. Democrats support collective bargaining? Enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts? The Paycheck Fairness Act? You don’t say?

For too long, we’ve had a financial system that stacked the deck against ordinary Americans. Banks on Wall Street played by different rules than businesses on Main Street and community banks…. We put in place Wall Street reform with smarter, tougher, commonsense rules that will prevent a crisis like that from ever happening again. We know that the free market only works when there are rules of the road to ensure that competition is fair, open, and honest.

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Someone should tell the Democrats that they can write all the rules they want, but if they don’t prosecute anybody, it doesn’t really matter. Launching civil suits through regulators isn’t exactly the tough stance that the platform suggests. But, you know, the Obama Justice Department thinks that it’s “just too hard” to get tough on Wall Street. Well, golly then.

The Democrats are also trying to distract voters from the fact that these tough regulations are mostly unrealized. As of September 2012, the administration has only finalized about 1/3 of the regulations required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. And they can’t proclaim that the obstructionist Republicans in Congress have blocked the administration’s rulemaking powers. Potential Wall Street donors on the other hand…

We have strengthened cooperation with Mexico, Colombia, and throughout Central America to combat narcotraffickers and criminal gangs that threaten their citizens and ours.

Well at least the platform now seems to recognize that giving the narcoterrorists machine guns may not be the brightest strategy. This probably doesn’t affect anyone outside of hardcore criminal law practice (or working on Darrell Issa’s Oversight Committee), but it just gives me an excuse to highlight yesterday’s assassination, in Colombia, of the Cocaine Grandma. In the words of the always brilliant Spencer Hall of EDSBS (I’m sure well known to the football fans out there), “WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE GOOD ONES?”

The Obama administration has led the world to recognize and defend Internet freedom – the freedom of expression, assembly, and association online for people everywhere – through coalitions of countries and by empowering individuals with innovative technologies. The administration has built partnerships to support an Internet that is secure and reliable and that is respectful of U.S. intellectual property, free flow of information, and privacy. To preserve the Internet as a platform for commerce, debate, learning, and innovation in the 21st century, we successfully negotiated international Internet policymaking principles, support the current multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, and oppose the extension of intergovernmental controls over the Internet.

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Here’s a good example of the Democratic Party bending to match the agenda of the nominee. Hollywood and many Democrats in the thrall of Hollywood and other entertainment lobbies support stricter legislation to control Internet piracy. President Obama broke with those voices during the SOPA/PIPA imbroglio, and now the platform describes how the status quo is just fine, thank you very much.

So entertainment lawyers, your clients just got the finger. Tech lawyers, your clients caught a break. Go down to the bar and commiserate/celebrate accordingly.

Speaking of intellectual property, what more do the Democrats say there?

As technology advances, we will continue to work with all stakeholders to protect the security of the nation and its knowledge assets, U.S. intellectual property, the functioning of fair and competitive markets, and the privacy, free expression, and due process rights of Americans.

I honestly don’t know what that means. We will deal with these problems in a way that makes both sides happy! Unicorns for everyone!

Oh, and Mitt Romney’s a monster who eats children. The platform mentions that a lot too, a continuation of a trend for Democrats that began during the Clinton-Gore years. Before 1984, the party in power did not mention the opposing candidate (save one mention of “Mr. Carter” in the preamble of the 1976 Republican platform), because the platform was supposed to be bigger than one race, and because neither candidate, in particular the party in power, felt the need to dignify its opponent by mention. In 1984, the Republicans made a handful of jabs at the “Carter-Mondale administration.” In 1996 and 2000, the platforms of Clinton and Gore both named their opponents repeatedly. In 2004, Bush mentioned Kerry three times, which pales in comparison to the 22 Romney name-checks in this year’s Democratic platform. Read into that what you will, folks.

Earlier: Pol Dancing: Five Less Heralded GOP Platform Planks That Impact Lawyers

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