[Peace-discuss] Nader's interview by Amy Goodman

[Phil Stinard]

Amy Goodman interviewed Nader on Saturday and broadcast the interview 
Monday.  Nader answers questions on Democratic Party dirty tricks, whether 
he has accepted help from the Republican Party, and whether he supports the 
Anybody But Bush phenomenon.  Great interview!

--Phil

----------------

AMY GOODMAN:  This weekend, I had a chance to sit down with Ralph Nader in 
Washington, D.C., for an extensive conversation about why he has chosen to 
stay in the race, and about the allegations that he is taking support from 
republicans. I began by asking him how his campaign is going.

      RALPH NADER: Well, there are two dimensions to it. One is to fight off 
the democrats. In state after state, they're promoting an unprecedented 
dirty tricks campaign against us. That's to put it mildly. Dozens of phony 
lawsuits requiring our signature guys to appear in court on short notice 
with all kinds of records going back to 2000. We are moving to quash the 
subpoenas, and we have won about nine out of 11 state Supreme Court 
decisions that put us back on the ballot. There's intimidation and 
harassment. All of this once it comes out, is going to be a disgrace in the 
history of the Democratic Party.

      AMY GOODMAN: Can you give a specific example?

      RALPH NADER: Yeah. A lot of them. For example, there's a 58-year-old 
woman in Portland who collected signatures for us. She went back home and 
cooked dinner for her grandchildren and there was a knock on the door. A man 
and woman appeared, well dressed, to inform her, if there were fraudulent 
signatures on her petition, she can be prosecuted and sent to jail for three 
years. That kind of intimidation knocked out 30 signature gatherers just in 
the Portland, Oregon, area. And in New Mexico -- in Arizona, for example, 
they had three corporate law firms go after us. Eventually, they knocked us 
off the ballot. They would say -- there's an ex-felon who collected 550 
signatures. They're invalid because the ex-felon who had been rehabilitated 
and was on jury service owed the state of Arizona 400 dollars. Just to 
defend that, at $250 an hour on our side, would have been prohibited. They 
hired Kirkland, Ellis corporate law firm in Ohio, 50 lawyers swarming all 
over the place to get us off Ohio. At Reed, Smith, a corporate law firm 
representing the big drug companies in Philadelphia, Livingston group with 
the former congressman Toby Moffett. So it's interesting; they had corporate 
law firms and lobbying firms working with the Democratic Party. And if the 
republicans spent a quarter of what the democrats did, we would have been on 
50 states. But the big lie that they -- that they spread, the democrats, was 
that republicans were supporting us, bankrolling us, only in three or four 
states did we see any organized republican help. We didn't take it. We 
didn't take the signatures. We did it by ourselves.

      AMY GOODMAN: Your critics point out on that issue that in Maryland -- 
in Michigan, that 45,000 signatures were handed in by the Republican Party.

      RALPH NADER: That's the major organized help. We expected and still 
are fighting to get it on the ballot on the reform party, which authorized 
us nationally, and at the state level. But the judge Ð and the politics here 
are incredibly obscure -- the judge didn't decide whether the rump group 
that was challenging us inside the Reform Party, had any validity compared 
to our majority group. In effect, he said, you have got 45,000 signatures, 
and we're still in the courts. We're saying, no. We want to be on the state 
reform party. That's how bizarre it's gotten. What was the motivation of the 
judge? Well, he figured if we were on the independent ticket, we would get 
more votes than if we were on the state reform party. The judge apparently 
had republican leanings. That's how obscure the whole thing is getting.

      AMY GOODMAN: But talk about the Republican Party gathering the 
signatures in Michigan for you.

      RALPH NADER: Yes. That was organized. But we didn't take it, and we 
still refuse to take it. But the court is trying to force us to take it by 
not deciding that we are accredited, and on the ballot with the State Reform 
Party. What IÕm saying to both parties: get off our backs, stop entangling 
us in your insidious schemes, let us compete for the voters. All of this is 
designed not just to get us off the ballot in numerous states that are 
considered close by the Democratic Party, but to deny millions of voters the 
opportunity to vote for the Nader-Camejo ticket, a rather serious civil 
liberties issue because the essence of running for office is freedom of 
speech, petition and assembly. It's remarkable how the civil liberties 
establishment could care less. They could care less about ballot access 
period, with very few exceptions. I wrote my first article on ballot access 
barriers in 1959, and things have gotten much worse for third party 
independent candidates.

      AMY GOODMAN: Is it more difficult now than it was in 2000?

      RALPH NADER: Oh, yes. It's more difficult because the laws that are 
passed by the two parties to keep competition at bay are full of trap doors. 
They're full of vague phrases and technicalities and provisions, and when 
one of the two parties wants to invoke them then it's like the door opens, 
and the fangs come out. That's what the democrats decided to do. For 
example, the republicans have not challenged Libertarian Party. Libertarian 
party, some of these parties get on, they don't even meet the standard 
because nobody challenges them. In some states, nobody challenges you. You 
don't -- you're on. We have to have one federal standard for ballot access 
for federal office, not 50 plus the District of Columbia. That is an 
antiquated subversion of more choices and voices on the ballot.

      AMY GOODMAN: How many ballots are you on right now?

      RALPH NADER: I think about 36 and rising. We might get close to 40.

      AMY GOODMAN: So, are you able to get a message out other than the 
issue of ballot access, given how much you're fighting simply to get on 
these state ballots?

      RALPH NADER: Oh, yes. The message, the campaigning in 50 states 
proceeds. It's just that of our staff are absorbed in time and resources 
with the ballot access fight. But I can assure you, Amy, the Democratic 
Party is going to pay a serious price for this after the election. I talked 
to Senator Kerry about nine, ten weeks ago. I informed him of what was going 
on, told him that Terry McAuliffe told me that he was going to encourage 
this kind of obstruction in the close states. Kerry said he didn't know a 
thing about it, and he would look into it. He has not gotten back to me. We 
have now called him 15 straight days, his office, and there's no return call 
from anybody. This is the kind of Democratic Party we have become accustomed 
to.

      AMY GOODMAN: What did Terry McAuliffe actually say to you, the head of 
the Democratic Party?

      RALPH NADER: He said, stay in the 31 close states, and I'll support 
you, if you stay out of the rest of the states. I said, you know, a lot of 
your people in Texas and even in slam dunk states -- where you shouldn't 
even be trying to get us off the ballot, you should be trying to get us to 
go into Texas and in Arizona -- are obstructing us. He said, I'm encouraging 
that. We're going to try to get you off the ballot in all of the close 
states.

      AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the issues you see as the most 
important right now?

      RALPH NADER: Well, the war is a big issue. I mean it's not just that 
it's a pending Vietnam, with the debate that we just all saw between Bush 
and Kerry, there's no question now in my mind that Kerry's going to pursue 
the war. He talks about victory. He talks about Bush shouldn't have invaded 
Iraq. He talks about mismanagement. But when he makes statements like on 
Fallujah, when he makes statements that more troops are needed, we're going 
to see this through, we're talking about a Richard Nixon succeeding a Lyndon 
Johnson on Vietnam. We're talking about civil war, because you know, they'll 
have enough Iraqi troops under our care and logistic support. There will be 
huge bloodshed. The only way that the U.S. is going to get out of this is if 
they leave a dictator behind, propped up by our troops, and diplomatic and 
political cover. We have the only responsible withdrawal plan, six months, 
military and corporate forces out, preceded by internationally supervised 
elections. So that we give the country back to the mainstream Iraqis. The 
bottom falls out of the resistance. That's the main argument of the 
resistance.

      AMY GOODMAN: You said military and corporate forces. What do you mean?

      RALPH NADER: And oil company forces. That's exactly what is irritating 
so many workers and Iraqis. It's their only major resource. Bush's oil 
companies are all over there. And then there's Halliburton and then there's 
Bechtel. So, it has to be a military and corporate withdrawal, so that the 
Iraqis realize they can get their country back, otherwise no light at the 
end of the tunnel. You will have shopkeepers by day, guerrillas by night, 
that sort of a thing.

      AMY GOODMAN: You sued the Commission on Presidential Debates last time 
around for not being included. You're in Florida for the first presidential 
debate. How do the rules work now? Are you going to sue again?

      RALPH NADER: No. There's still a private corporation called the 
Commission on Presidential Debates, created and dominated by the two 
parties. They can do whatever they want. However, they have been shaken this 
time. A book has come out exposing them called No Debate. We won a Federal 
District Court lawsuit that's going to get them in trouble with the Federal 
Election Commission. Their tax exemption is being challenged. Their 
corporate support is being exposed. There's a new debate commission called 
Citizens' Debate Commission, which proposed five debates. The networks, of 
course, didn't cooperate. But I think on the next round, the debate 
commission is going to be real trouble. More and more people are realizing 
that this is the gateway to tens of millions of American voters. No other 
way to get there, unless you're a Perot, and that's pretty amazing, isn't 
it?

      AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean the corporate support of the commission? 
How does it work? What is it that you are challenging?

      RALPH NADER: Well, the expenses for the debates are paid for by the 
likes of Anheuser-Busch, a beer company. In the past, Phillip Morris, a 
tobacco company, Ford Motor Company, AT&T, the airlines more recently, 
whatever. In return, they have these hospitality suites and the big 
corporate executives who fund the debates get very preferential access. It's 
really a good deal for them because it's also deductible as a charitable 
expense. Can you imagine?

      AMY GOODMAN: How do they choose who gets to debate, or is it just that 
the two party candidates get to debate, and how do they tell you that you 
are out of it, or any third party candidate?

      RALPH NADER: They have an impossible criteria that Perot couldn't have 
met in 1992, which is in September, five major polls bringing you at 15% or 
higher in the number of people who want to vote for you. It's an impossible 
situation. The very companies that own the polling subsidiaries are the ones 
who decide whether they're going to give you coverage. Of course, if you 
don't get coverage, you don't get polls. If you don't get polls, they don't 
give you coverage. It's -- the system of control is so sophisticated and so 
abstract compared to authoritarian regimes who used the hobbled boot at 4:00 
a.m. or whatever. There is no democracy in our elections anymore. It's not 
just that money corrupts. It's not just that the two parties are converging 
and their similarities tower over the dwindling real differences. It's that 
they have now carved up the country into one-party districts. So 95% of the 
voters in the country don't have a choice between the two parties in the 
House of Representatives. They're all democrat or all republican. And now 
they're doing it to the blue and red states, and now they're moving to do it 
in the Senate, so you end up with 5% of the seats in the U.S. Congress 
competitive between the two parties. An election means selection. There is 
no selection. It's a coronation for the incumbent.

      RALPH NADER: What do you say to those like the latest is this list of 
several dozen people who supported you in the past that include Noam Chomsky 
and Howard Zinn who say that the stakes are too high right now, that it will 
make a difference if Kerry gets in over Bush, even if Kerry -- even if they 
don't agree with Kerry on a lot of issues, that in some particularly 
domestic issues like Supreme Court Justices, health insurance, other issues, 
will make a difference, that his being in office over Bush could make a 
difference to many people's lives in this country?

      RALPH NADER: Well, it's a total loss of nerve. I mean, first of all, 
they didn't ask anything of Kerry. They said to the voters in the close 
states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon, they said, vote for Kerry, quote, 
'even though we strongly disagree with Kerry on the war and other issues,' 
end quote. Well, when you don't demand anything of Kerry, he gets worse. If 
you don't make Kerry better, he gets worse. Because the corporations are 
demanding 24 hours a day. They're not squeamish like the left is. More 
important is that if the left believes that their issues are compelling 
issues to the majority of the American people, they should be proud to pull 
Kerry toward them so he can get more votes. It's as if they're ashamed of 
their issues, like, gee, living wage, that's a very important issue, but 
it's not a big vote getter. Like full health insurance for all, that's very 
important. We want to pull Kerry in that direction. It's not -- like getting 
out of Iraq, where now a majority of people are saying it was a mistake to 
send the troops in, and 42% of the people want the troops back yesterday. Oh 
no, no, no. Don't pull him into this issue; it's not a vote-getter. This is 
the collapse of the left. You couldn't have more distinguished people on 
that list. It's a collapse of the left. They have in effect put a figurative 
ring in their nose. They have said to the democrats, because the republicans 
are so bad, we collapse. We're going for the least-worse. When you don't 
make any demands, when you engage in unconditional surrender, why should 
Kerry ever look back at you? Why should he give you the time of day? What 
was even worse is that these are our supporters in the year 2000, and they 
didn't go to the next step and say, in the safe states, we urge you to vote 
for the Nader/Camejo ticket. What message is this to the younger generation 
when the seasoned leftist thinkers and activists can in effect turn their 
back on the only significant third party or independent effort that 
represents the whole panorama of where they want the country and the world 
to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Independent presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. We'll be back 
with him in a minute. [break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our conversation with independent presidential 
candidate, Ralph Nader.

      AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to those who say Kerry should just make 
you irrelevant? Do you agree with that?

      RALPH NADER: I don't even know what they mean.

      AMY GOODMAN: Take on your issues.

      RALPH NADER: Well, that's what Kerry started to say, but he didn't 
follow through. He said several times about six months ago, take away our 
votes by taking away our issues. But what's very significant here about what 
this statement portended is, there's nothing left of the left. They don't 
have any self-respect anymore. They are so afraid of Bush that they're 
willing to concede to a least-worse candidate who is just like Bush on the 
Pentagon budget he doesn't challenge at all, on the war in Iraq, on 
Israel/Palestine, and even corporate welfare. He's different rhetoric [] 
Kerry is - but he hasn't taken up 10 proposals of boondoggles that I put on 
his desk. He knew about the big subsidy programs for the drug companies and 
the oil companies and the mining companies, corporate crime, fraud and 
abuse. He talks a good game very rarely but he doesn't do anything about it. 
You look at his website, there's hardly anything on corporate crime, 
corporate welfare, consumer protection. So, what's left of the left here?

      AMY GOODMAN: What do you think Kerry is good on?

      RALPH NADER: He's good on Arctic Refuge. He won't drill on that. But 
you know, why doesn't he talk about whole areas that Clinton gave away in 
northern Alaska, which the oil companies are able to have - they haven't 
drilled in yet. You know, I'm not so sure he's going to be hard-line on 
Social Security and Medicare. The Democrats cracked on that under 
Clinton/Gore; Medicare, HMO's, and maybe certain personal accounts and 
Social Security. I don't see much difference at all on foreign affairs and 
military policy. Even the New York Times had a page one story recently 
saying, there's not much difference between Bush and Kerry. And why should 
they be? They're just proxies for the real players, which are the corporate 
supremacists controlling our government. Every department, every agency is 
controlled overwhelmingly by corporate power, including the Department of 
Labor.

      AMY GOODMAN: Supreme Court Justices?

      RALPH NADER: Here is where sports fans are smarter than progressives 
because it is true that the Democrats would not have proposed a Scalia or a 
Thomas. But it is also true that the Republicans would have stopped the 
Democrats, if they had the counterpart nominees. And the Democrats didn't 
stop Scalia. Kerry and Gore, 98:0, every Democrat voted for Scalia. Couldn't 
get anyone. I was up there on Capitol Hill trying to get - just for the 
historical record - a few dissenters. When it came to Thomas, that was more 
disgraceful. A more unworthy successor to Thurgood Marshall could hardly be 
envisioned. And he gets confirmed 52-48. How? 11 Democratic senators crossed 
the line and confirmed him in a Senate dominated by the Democrats. The 
majority leader was Senator George Mitchell. So, sports fans analyze their 
team in terms of not just offense, but defense. The Democrats have collapsed 
their ability to stop the Republicans on most issues, including the pay cuts 
for the wealthy, the war resolution, the Patriot Act, the Energy bill, the 
notorious drug benefit bill, the huge half trillion dollar windfall for the 
drug industry. They could have stopped those. They didn't. So, you have to 
measure a party not just on offense, but can it stop the Republicans? And 
for the last ten years, the Democrats have been losing at the state, local 
and national level to the worst of the Republicans.

      AMY GOODMAN: So, would you say now, Kerry is no better than Bush?

      RALPH NADER: He is better, but, you know, Bush is an easy act to 
follow. How much better? I mean, scrape our expectation levels an inch above 
the ground. I mean, that's the point. The real differences we have to talk 
about, Amy, are the differences between the two parties, and the necessities 
of the American people and the world, or the differences between the two 
parties, and the platform of the Nader/Camejo campaign, which people are 
invited to visit at the website, voteNader.org.

      AMY GOODMAN: You said this group of several dozen former Nader 
advocates that now have come out saying that they are for Kerry, at least 
they could have said in the safe states, vote for Nader.

      RALPH NADER: Yes.

      AMY GOODMAN: You spent a lot of time the last week, for example, in 
Florida. Now this is not a safe state. What are you trying to accomplish 
there?

      RALPH NADER: I'm trying to accomplish a 50-state campaign. I have now 
gone to all 50 states, the only candidate who did that. And the debate was 
in Miami. I want to go to where the debates are, as well. But I'm not going 
to stay out of the close states. I'm going to go in all of the states. I 
have gone on all of the states but I'm going to go in the states where we 
can get the most votes.

      AMY GOODMAN: And what do you say to those who say you are - the 
Republicans - you are the dream of the Republicans?

      RALPH NADER: No, I think I'm the nightmare of the Republicans because 
I'm going around the country taking apart Bush in ways progressives would 
love the Democrats to take apart Bush. But the Democrats are too 
unimaginative, cautious or indentured to the same commercial interests of 
the Republicans that they won't pick these up. To really dramatize it, a few 
days ago, we had a march in Washington of 12 of our staff dressed in white 
waiter coats, and we rented silver platters. They marched down to the 
Kerry/Edwards headquarters with the silver platters. And each one had an 
issue that was labeled, how to beat Bush, for example, living wage for all. 
47 million American workers making Wal-mart wages? You don't think they 
would alert themselves to the Democrats if they were authentically for it? 
They all went to the headquarters, and they delivered 12 issues that the old 
Democratic Party would have adopted without any urging. But this is a 
decadent party. I mean this is a party that spends more time and more money 
trying to get us off the ballot when they keep telling us we're not even 
going to get as many votes as last time. And they don't actively register 9 
million African American voters, 90% of whom would vote Democrat and 
according to Reverend Jesse Jackson would tip Ohio and Pennsylvania, for 
example. I mean this is Ð they are out of it. Their basically demonstrating 
again and again that the only way Kerry is going to be President of the 
United States is if Bush self-destructs, as he seems to have started to on 
the first debate.

      AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think they're not pushing harder for voter 
registration, for example, among African Americans?

      RALPH NADER: First of all, it's hard work. It's much easier for $46 
million regaling Kerry on 30-second television ads. Their consultants get 
15% of that. They don't get 15% of millions of dollars going into grassroot 
voter registration. And Kerry is surrounded by corporate financiers, 
corporate advisers like Robert Rubin, and corporate campaign consultants 
like the 0 for 7 record of Bob Shrum. These corporate campaign consultants, 
they work on a 15% rake-off. When the election is over, there's no problem. 
They just go back to their offices and represent the greedy, multinational 
corporations. It's all one big corporate state. That's what it is. It almost 
Ð and the tragedy are the voters. The tragedy of is - Eugene Debs once said 
near the end of his career, he said, "the American voters can have almost 
anything they want, except it seems like they don't want much of anything at 
all when it comes to election day." And so, we're focusing on not flattering 
the voters because the politicians flatter, fool, and flummox voters. We're 
trying not to flatter them. In a way this is what I put in my appendix of my 
new book, The Good Fight, how to be a super voter. We have to put decent 
pressure on voters to become more diligent, maybe be at least diligent as 
they are sports fans where they do their homework, they know the statistics, 
the strategies, who to assign responsibility to, and above all, sport fans 
do not listen to the rhetoric of the players. It's all -- it's all 
performance.

      AMY GOODMAN: What are your plans after election day?

      RALPH NADER: Well, we're going to open up a number of new citizen 
groups. We're going to continue expanding to drive against corporate crime, 
fraud, and abuse. I want to do more work on the collapse of contract law in 
American law. All the contracts people sign as consumers is ridiculous. It's 
all just fine print and they cannot touch them. And also, I want to increase 
the political reform movement. We keep building -- we keep finding people in 
the younger generation, people of all ages, we have to organize them. We 
have to break up the two-party system. They're leaving the country with a 
one-party districts and they're destroying our democracy. It's amazing how I 
can speak to even someone like you, and I have known you a long enough that 
when I say there are no elections left, in 90% of the districts, I don't 
even see a flush in your face. But to me, that's the end of democracy.

      RALPH NADER: Explain what you mean.

      AMY GOODMAN: When I say, we used to live on a fiction of the two-party 
system and then they began converging more and more and more, the Republican 
and Democrats because they're funded by the same interests, and the 
corporate supremacists have done a spectacular job taking over Washington, 
D.C. Now, you have Tom Delay in Houston, one of the worst members of 
Congress. Never challenged by the Democrats. You have Nancy Pelosi in San 
Francisco, never challenged by the Republicans. Now multiply that up to 95% 
of the seats, and there is no selection. There is no two-party system. Never 
mind three-four party systems. It's over. And people just -- they cannot 
grab the gravity of this. Because they don't seem to be making the 
connection between the decay of the two-party system, and the increase in 
poverty and increase in unlivable wage jobs, which historians in the 19th 
century used to call wage slavery, and tens of thousands of people dying or 
getting sick because they cannot afford health care, and the hollowing out 
of our industry to China and elsewhere, and the destruction of what's left 
of our public services. I mean, they're crumbling, look at public libraries, 
look at schools, look a clinics. The concentration of wealth and power has 
never been greater in the country. If you look at the figures, you think 
it's some Central American country, stratification of the top 1%, compared 
to the rest. And there's no end to it. The point is that the standards of 
living are crumbling. Household income, median income, is going down. 
Affordable housing is beyond the reach of millions of families, and we're 
doubling the economy in the last 25 years.

      AMY GOODMAN: Do you agree with what Andy Stern said in the Washington 
Post at Service Employees International Union, when he basically was saying, 
Bush should be in for another term because it will actually help the labor 
movement, because people will finally mobilize?

      RALPH NADER: Well, he tried to recant that the next day. That 
surprised me. I wouldn't think he would say that, because it doesn't matter 
what party is in power, the labor movement keeps declining. The labor 
movement won't even make the Democratic Party take a stand to repeal 
Taft-Hartley [Labor Act], the 1947 law that has squelched tens of millions 
of workers from forming labor unions. This -- it's over. We have to start 
new. We have to reach out and organize the political and civic energies of 
the American people. We have these conferences by Robert Borosage and others 
in Washington, their progressive agenda for America. They're thumb-suckers. 
They don't organize. There's no social justice movement in this country. 
It's not preceded by field organizers. Whether it was civil rights, farmer 
populist or labor or whatever. There's a decadence to the liberal 
intelligencia that we have been privileged this year to highlight and make 
visible because we drew it out. And by stressing the Democratic Party, the 
pus and the mucus of the political bigotry trying to keep us off the ballot 
and deny millions of voters an opportunity to vote for us is also coming 
out. So, that's another collateral benefit of the Nader/Camejo campaign.

      AMY GOODMAN: Last question, and that is the rage of your former 
friends that you're experiencing right now. What is your response to this, 
to your being so -- to them feeling so alienated by all of the things that 
you have represented in the past that they say they have supported?

      RALPH NADER: Think they deserve John Kerry for another four years. So, 
then they'll come back in a year and start complaining, oh, oh, this party, 
oh, the White House, so terrible on the environment, caving in to the coal 
companies and the nuclear and not doing anything about biotech or W.T.O. or 
NAFTA. How many times do they have to be betrayed? You can forgive them in 
they're under 30. They have not been betrayed enough, but people -- my peer 
group going like that? There's no end to the lowering of their expectation 
level. The least-worsters have no end logic to their attitude. Because every 
four years until the end of kingdom come, there will be a least-worst party 
in America. They have no end, in 2008, 2012. And every four years, both 
parties get worse and they make no demands. If you are going to go for least 
worst, at least pull the least of the worst in your direction. They don't 
even have the courage of their convictions to stand tall, and to say they 
have wimped out is truly an understatement. And it's a tragedy because 
they're very bright, and they fought a lot of good fights in the old days. 
They have either run out of gas, or they have lost their self-respect.

AMY GOODMAN: Independent presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, speaking on 
Saturday night in Washington, D.C.