Crashing the Party Since 1980, Nader's career has followed an arc similar to the first half of a Popeye cartoon. Bluto showed up in the form of Ronald Reagan. His administration refused to enforce laws Nader had inspired and turned the regulatory agencies into tools of industry. During Clinton's tenure the signing of NAFTA and the U.S. entry into the WTO meant that labor and environmental groups could be slighted in trade negotiations. For twenty years, Washington, D.C., crusted over into a giant Blutocracy. Nader fired shots across the bow of the two-party Titanic by introducing himself as a presidential candidate in 1992 and again in 1996. Reluctant to siphon off enough progressive votes to defeat the Democrats, Nader gave a few good speeches and otherwise didn't do much. Still, the White House watched closely. "Clinton was very concerned with Nader's candidacy" in 1996, says Dick Morris, Clinton's former adviser and pollster. "He kept raising it with me and asking whether I thought it would cost him California. He could not understand how Nader would not draw votes from him. I don't know that he actually tried to knock Nader off the ballot, but he was deeply concerned." This year, Nader is campaigning for real on the Green Party ticket. The Blutocracy has finally dumped one too many loads of toxic waste on his head. "That's all I can stand," was teh message when he announced his candidacy in February. "I can't stands no more." Nader's stated goal is to get five percent of the vote, in which case the Greens would get federal matching funds in 2004. With his campaign just gaining momentum, he now rates six to seven percent in the polls, three times as much as (Reform Party candidate) Pat Buchanan. He and Buchanan are suing to be allowed into the presidential debates. If they succeed – a highly unlikely prospect – the entire nation could go into the same sort of political flux that rearranged Minnesota when Jesse Ventura was allowed to debate. A number of ordinarily Democratic celebro-Americans are supporting Nader: Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Eddie Vedder, Susan Sarandon, Paul Newman, Phil Donahue, Jackson Browne. "There's a widespread assumption that candidates in the two parties can't say what they believe or they won't get elected," says Browne, one of the most active of activists in the musical community. "So the people end up voting on the basis of spin and then hoping that in a few years the candidate might have done something that they assumed he believed in but couldn't actually say. It's time to stop this. Ralph Nader says what he thinks, he can discuss any issue without a scriptwriter, and he's the only candidate talking about government handouts to corporations."
How serious are you about running for president this time? We're trying to get on the ballot in all fifty states. We're going to show that citizen power can overcome business dollars in election campaigns. Why didn't you run in the Democratic primaries? Because the party is not capable of internal reform anymore. It's too far gone into the corporate pits. What are the first five things you would do as president? First, I would declare a pro-democracy initiative – that means public financing of election campaigns, urge the states to have same-day registration, make voting day a holiday and a celebration of the democratic process, develop a binding "none of the above" proposal. People could check "none of the above" on their ballots, and if that wins, there would have to be another election. Second, I would push to remove restrictions that hamper workers from forming trade unions in the private sector. Third, I would press for citizen channels on cable and over the air as a condition of broadcast licensing. The people should have their own television channels and their own radio and television networks, because the people own the airwaves. Four, I would announce tough enforcement of consumer health, safety and economic-justice laws throughout the federal government. Crack down on corporate crime, fraud and abuse. And I'd put all federal contracts and grants above $100,000 on the Internet: the coal leasing, the gold leasing, the oil leasing, the NIH giveaways, the defense contracts. Five, I would press immediately for universal healthcare. Can I list more than five? Go for it. I think that all students should learn citizen skills in how to practice democracy, so they can become more powerful in shaping the future of our country instead of having corporations shape its future. They should be taught how to use the Freedom of Information Act, how to do voter profiles of legislators, how to build coalitions, how to do policy statements, how to put on news conferences. I would use the bully pulpit to press for all of that, since it can't be mandated. What happened between 1996 and 2000 to cause you to run a full-blown campaign this time? The doors of democracy are closing in this town and around the country, which has been hijacked by global corporations. They're dominating almost every sector of our society: the workplace, the marketplace, the government, the media. They're exploiting and raising our children with the most vile materials. They're overmedicating our children with dangerous drugs. Almost nothing is off-limits to the commercial juggernaut. What about your critics who say that a vote for Nader will help elect George W. Bush, who would appoint religious crackpots to the Supreme Court and reverse Roe vs. Wade? If they're progressives and they believe the two-party system is irretrievably corrupt, and that the diffferences between the two parties are narrowing rapidly, and that voting for the least worst every four years guarantees that both of them will continue to get worse, then why are they legitimizing this decaying duopoly by giving one of the parties their vote? The only language a politician understands is to deny him your vote and put it in another visible column, in this case the Green Party column. And then the politicians will say "Gee, public sentiment is shifting, and we'd better react to it; otherwise we're going to lose even more votes." Beyond that, if they want a tactical answer, Buchanan will take a lot of Republican votes. And in California in 1996, where I got 260,000 votes without campaigning, four out of ten votes were from Republicans. So we're not attracting just Democrats. But the people who make this argument, what is their standard for abandonment of corrupt politics? The two-party system has turned our government over to the global corporations. How bad does it have to get? The issue of abortion drives progressives back to the Democrats and the religious right back to the Republicans. It's in the interest of both parties to keep the Supreme Court balanced at 5-4 so people think their vote counts for something. Well, think of the low level of expectations of people who see it like that. You've got military weapons proliferation, massive world hunger and starvation, global infectious diseases coming this way in drug-resistant form. You've got the majority of workers in this country making less money in real terms than they did in 1979, notwithstanding a booming economy. You've got twenty percent child poverty in this country, massive homelessness and inadequate housing. You've got $6.3 trillion in consumer debt, an epidemic of corporate crime, a labor movement that's weaker than it's ever been, obstructed by laws that make it impossible to form trade unions in the private sector. You've got hundreds of billions of dollars going to corporate welfare every year, meaning that citizens are gouged not just as consumers but as taxpayers. And you put this up against Roe vs. Wade. And you say that all these other things don't count, because you want to preserve Roe vs. Wade. This is a snare and a delusion. Even in the unlikely event of the Supreme Court repealing Roe vs. Wade, there isn't a chance in hell that a state would destroy the Republican Party by passing restrictions on the pro-life side. The polls are against it. If the pro-choice people think that the pro-life people are organized and aggressive, what do you think is going to happen when the shoe is on the other foot? The power of the pro-life people is miniscule compared to what will be unleashed if the legislatures try to restrict the right to abortion. It's never going to happen. |
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