evidence: Progressive Democrats already have identified a list of issues where they hope to influence the party platform, including calling for filibuster reform in the Senate, declaring a national climate emergency and ending private funding of elections. But the war in the Gaza Strip and potential conditions on future U.S. military assistance to Israel is poised to be the most contentious as Democrats prepare for their convention this August. [...] In 2012, the DNC members debated taking steps toward including language endorsing same-sex marriage before President Obama had taken that position publicly, though he ultimately did that well before the convention. In 2016, Sanders leveraged his significant tranche of delegates to pressure Hillary Clinton on a wide range of progressive policy priorities, from climate change to student debt to international trade treaties, resulting in the most progressive platform in the parties’ history. [...] In 2020, the Biden team largely headed off a platform fight by creating so-called Unity Task Forces, composed of both Biden and Sanders surrogates, which produced draft language for the party platform signed off by both camps. Those recommendations ultimately telegraphed a more robust, progressive policy agenda that went beyond what Biden had proposed in his primary campaign.