It’s convention season! Here’s what we are watching

The Democratic National Convention kicked off — digitally — on Monday. It is the most high profile opportunity for Democrats to promote all of the splashy policies they hope to enact under a Biden administration. Here are the three burning questions STAT’s Washington team will be watching for this week: Will Covid-19 steal the show? You can bet Covid-19 will come up in nearly every aspect of the Democratic convention. After all, the U.S.’s botched response to the pandemic has become among the biggest election liabilities for the Trump administration. Fifty-eight percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the crisis, according to RealClearPolitics, which has averaged nine polls on the topic. The Center for American Progress has already kicked off the convention with a panel focused on how to “move forward” and right the U.S.’s coronavirus response. And the convention is packed with speakers like Governors Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer, whose political careers have been boosted by their responses to the pandemic. The Democratic Party’s platform reads like a manifesto on Trump’s purported Covid-19 failures. “Make no mistake: President Trump’s abject failure to respond forcefully and capably to the COVID-19 pandemic — his failure to lead — makes him responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans,” the platform states. Was the Medicare for All drama for naught?  A number of progressive Democrats made waves over the past week by pledging to vote no on the Democrats’ sweeping national platform because it did not formally endorse Medicare for All.  It was, in many ways, the culmination of a years-long crusade by progressives to make 2020 the year of Medicare for All. In many ways, these progressives were successful: The policy, once considered radical, became central to the 2020 Democratic primary. But with a Democratic presidential nominee outwardly opposed to the policy and a platform that doesn’t even mention the idea, it’s an open question of where progressives go from here. How hard will drug makers get hit? Bashing on the drug industry is politically popular, especially among Democrats, but it’s an open question whether Democrats will prioritize bashing “Big Pharma” at this year’s convention. After all, Democrats spent the last four years attempting to drastically cut prescription drug costs  — and largely failed. Democrats’ national platform is also strikingly moderate: It pledges to let Medicare negotiate over drug prices, cap how much seniors must pay every month for drugs, eliminate tax breaks for drug ads, and crack down on illegal behavior like colluding over prices. The plan makes no mention, however, of more progressive ideas, like going after certain drug makers’ patents, and it doesn’t even include popular ideas included in platforms of years past, like allowing the importation of drugs from Canada.