As Reed Cartwright points out at The Panda's Thumb and De Rerum Natura, you can now take a look at the Democratic Party Platform. It's mostly good news. I mean, it's mostly platitudes, of course, with little in the way of really concrete policy, but at there's also little to be ashamed of and generally the Democrats seem to have their heads screwed on straight. (It doesn't contain the kind of stuff that would make me gag that you find in the Republican Party of Texas platform at least.)

Just as a rough measure of emphasis, I had my text editor count the number of instances that various issues I think important were mentioned. Here's the favorable stuff:

You think the Democrats are going to be pushing health care hard? Good for them. They spend a couple of pages on health care reform. They also focus on minority health issues and long-term investment in health education and science.

Eliminating health disparities. Millions of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and American Indians continue to live sicker and die younger in America. Cultural and language barriers remain a particular problem for immigrant communities. We will fight racial and ethnic health care disparities by increasing research and training in the medical profession, breaking down language barriers, and ensuring good health care for all Americans. We will encourage and support enabling more minority students to enter the sciences. We will also work to ensure that women have access to the best medicines and state-of-the-art prevention and detection techniques to stop diseases early. We will also support prevention of illness through better nutrition and exercise.

They also hammer on good stewardship of the environment, increasing funding and support for education and science, and the independence of science from ideology.

Investing in science to battle disease. We will push the boundaries of science in search of new medical therapies and cures. The Bush Administration has put ideology over science, skewing information about everything from women's health to scientific research. Americans deserve access to the best evidence available about illnesses, therapies, and cures. From new therapies to prolong life for people with AIDS, to new openings in the battle to cure cancer, the possibilities of medical research fill us with hope. We will secure more funding for aggressive biomedical research seeking affordable and effective therapies based on real science.

President Bush has rejected the calls from Nancy Reagan, Christopher Reeve and Americans across the land for assistance with embryonic stem cell research. We will reverse his wrongheaded policy. Stem cell therapy offers hope to more than 100 million Americans who have serious illnesses – from Alzheimer's to heart disease to juvenile diabetes to Parkinson's. We will pursue this research under the strictest ethical guidelines, but we will not walk away from the chance to save lives and reduce human suffering.

Much of the discussion of education talks about math and science.

John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe that a strong America begins at home with strong families, and that strong families need the best schools. We believe schools must teach fundamental skills like math and science, and fundamental values like citizenship and responsibility. We believe providing resources without reform is a waste of money, and reform without resources is a waste of time. And we believe politicians who expect students to learn responsibility should start by keeping their own promises.

And, yay, let's help kids go to college! And study math and science!

Making college affordable. With the leadership of John Kerry and John Edwards, we will make college more affordable, so that more young people get higher education, and more of those who graduate get relief from the crushing burden of debt. We will make student aid faster and simpler to get so students aren't scared off by the complicated process. We will offer generous tax credits to reduce the price of four years of college for all students, including those who pay their own way and can least afford college now. We will strengthen our aid programs for students while eliminating wasteful subsidies for lenders. At a time when all good jobs increasingly depend on advanced skills, we will strengthen technical training for those who do not attend college. Finally, we must place a special emphasis on expanding achievement in math and science. These are subjects where America has always led the world and must continue to lead in the 21st century.

The environmental proposals are sane and responsible, but I just had to cite this one because they're using language that will drive Chris Mooney batty.

Cleaner water and healthier communities. We will work with communities to reduce water pollution—not only from factories, but also from large corporate farms, storm water runoff, and sewer overflows. We will bring environmental justice to low-income, rural, and minority communities, using federal resources to improve public health and spur economic development by cleaning up polluted sites. We will restore the "polluter pays" principle to fund the cleanup of the most polluted sites, so that those who cause environmental problems pay to fix them. We will protect Nevada and its communities from the high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca mountain which has not been proven to be safe by sound science.

Although they are on the good side of the fence on these issues, there isn't much emphasis on them. Most of the AIDS policy is in reference to foreign assistance. All they say about abortion is that "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." OK, but why rare? I don't want the party dictating how often people will be allowed to get abortions, and I suspect that it's just weasely political phrasing.

Then there were a few things that I imagine they had to mention, but just aren't front-burner issues for me, personally.

There's lots of stuff about taxes, but it gets tiring quickly. The thing is I just don't think that what politicians say about taxes before they get elected has much to tell me about what they will do once they take office. But OK, the gist of what they say is that the middle class will be helped out by their tax policy, and the rich will haul a heavier load. I'm all for it. I hope it actually happens.

Cutting taxes for middle class Americans. First, we must restore our values to our tax code. We want a tax code that rewards work and creates wealth for more people, not a tax code that hoards wealth for those who already have it. With the middle class under assault like never before, we simply cannot afford the massive Bush tax cuts for the very wealthiest. We should set taxes for families making more than $200,000 a year at the same level as in the late 1990s, a period of great prosperity when the wealthiest Americans thrived without special treatment. We will cut taxes for 98 percent of Americans and help families meet the economic challenges of their everyday lives. And we will oppose tax increases on middle class families, including those living abroad.

"Terror" is another word that the politicans have to say a lot nowadays, and it's mostly meaningless. The Democrats have bought into the "War on Terror" slogan and use that phrase 7 times. There are some things which just aren't dealt with appropriately by the metaphor of war, and terror, along with drugs and poverty, is one of them. I'd like to see a Democrat come out and state that we're never going to eradicate terrorism by sending lots of soldiers to foreign countries to blow things up.

There are a few things I just thoroughly dislike, and would rather see completely changed around.

The military is going to grow under Kerry/Edwards, damn it. I think this is the most objectionable part of the platform: I want a commitment to social reform at home and a foreign policy that isn't a matter of smacking other countries around, and I don't think we'll get it by expanding the military.

Expanding active duty personnel. As a first step, we will expand America's active duty forces. The war in Iraq has overextended our armed services. The vast majority of the Army's active duty combat divisions are committed to Iraq—currently there, preparing to go, or recently returned. That is a dangerous and potentially disastrous strain that limits our capacity to respond to other crises.

There's not a lot of god-talk, but what there is is jarring. They repeat the "one nation, under god" nonsense and blather about "god-given" crap. It irritates me personally, but I guess I have to live with it.