Was the 2025 Massachusetts Democratic Convention a step forward or a step back for the Massachusetts Democratic Party? Even after serving as a delegate to the convention, I’m still not sure. We were there to vote for a new party platform — and vote we did — but the platform we voted for isn’t exactly “new.”
Normally, a party convention during a year with no federal election is where locally elected party delegates discuss, amend and ultimately adopt an updated version of the party platform. Usually, the proposed platform is an edit that builds upon the previous one: the next stage of a living document, worked on by decades of passionate Democrats.
This year, though, was different. For some reason, the Democratic Party Platform Committee decided to chew up and swallow the existing platform from 2021 — and what came out the other end was worse than the metaphorical picture you might be imagining right now. Rather, the proposed platform for 2025 felt more like day-old soda with too much ice in it: weirdly bland, flat and entirely insufficient to quench one’s thirst…