Ralph Nader: ‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’

[funky_fresh]

Left - Right: In the end, its all the same. Its a two headed monster with the same dark heart.

Mr. Nader is eloquent in his explanation.

Ralph Nader: ‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’

By Chris Hedges

January 03, 2010 "Truthdig' - -Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.

"The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes," Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. "The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats."

Nader fears a repeat of the left's cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don't do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don't fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.

"The left has nowhere to go," Nader said. "Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?' It's very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don't understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.

"Corporate power makes demands all the time," Nader went on. "It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing."

There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.

Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.

"Obama has the formula now," Nader said. "You give the Republicans a lot of what they want. Many of them vote for you. You get your Democrat percentage. You weave a hybrid victory. That is what he learned in the lame-duck session. He gets praised as being a statesman and a leader and getting things done. Think of all the rewards he can contemplate while he is in Hawaii compared to what they were saying about him on Nov. 5. All the columnists and pundits say that now he can work with John Boehner. But once you take a broader view, it is the difference in the mph of corporatism. McCain is 50 miles per hour and Obama is 40 miles per hour.

"The left has disemboweled itself," Nader said. "It doesn't even have a strategy every four years like a good poker player. The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn't even made Obama's campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing. And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation. It will start playing out big time in New York State with Andrew Cuomo and others. They will start saying, ‘Why are you getting this? Most workers who pay the taxes, who pay your salaries, are not getting this.' This plays."

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...o_go_20110102/

[soulster]

A vote for Barack Obama showed faith and solidarity in the Democratic party for a change. It showed that Democrats, for once, were smart enough not to fall for Nader's divide and get defeated routine. If Democrats had voted for Nader, John McCain would be sitting in the White House right now, and if you think it's bad now, we would have never heard the end of Sarah Palin! Whatever you think of Obama's lack of a spine in dealing with the republicans, things would have been far worse with McCain in the oval office.

Ralph Nader has a lot in common with his far-right and Libertarian brethren. He's so narrowly focused on his agenda that he can't see how reckless is ideas are. The only reason he's never held public office in the 60-some years he's been active is because he keeps playing on the fringes. Perhaps he should have joined the Democrats.

Nader has some good points about the Democrats and the corner they've painted themselves into. If they had played dirty like the republicans do, and did what we elected them to do, they would not be in the situation they are in now, having to battle the House.

[arrr&bee]

Ok let me see if i got this...the left is not right so they're out so does the right move over to where the left was and if so who moves to the right?or will there be a right if they move to the left do we create a new direction since the right has moved to the left and what about the middle which way do they move or do they just stand still until we replace the vacancy left by the right moving to the left is there a vacancy on the left since there won't be a left i guess not i hope it comes out right or can we still say right after right moves to the left maybe the middle will tilt in one direction or the other will there be a magnetic pull of some sort because the balance will be off won't it..i'm confused so i'm gonna go lay down until this all gets figured out but i'll lay in the middle because there may not be a left and to lay on the right might be wrong...help!!!

[soulster]

What's funny is that there seems to be no end to how extreme the right can get, but the left seems to have a limit.

[timmyfunk]

Ok let me see if i got this...the left is not right so they're out so does the right move over to where the left was and if so who moves to the right?or will there be a right if they move to the left do we create a new direction since the right has moved to the left and what about the middle which way do they move or do they just stand still until we replace the vacancy left by the right moving to the left is there a vacancy on the left since there won't be a left i guess not i hope it comes out right or can we still say right after right moves to the left maybe the middle will tilt in one direction or the other will there be a magnetic pull of some sort because the balance will be off won't it..i'm confused so i'm gonna go lay down until this all gets figured out but i'll lay in the middle because there may not be a left and to lay on the right might be wrong...help!!!

Everyone on both sides is immobile. But the right has never given off the impression of being flexible, and they never will.

[bankhousedave]

Two wrongs don't make a right, RnB, but whoever gets in there won't be much left - leastwise for thee and me.

[robb_k]

It appears to me that USA is heading for 3rd World status and then a bloody revolution. I hope the worst of that progression occurs after I am gone from this life. The middle class, which made that country great, is being squeezed out of existence. Neither major political party represents or answers to the people. There WILL be a time when the people won't stand for such conditions anymore.

[nomis]

..I doubt it most are glued to their Ipod/computer/playstation/widescreen tv to get off their asses and fight for change they have to unplug themselves from their zombie like existence for their to be a revolution...

[soulster]

Neither major political party represents or answers to the people.

Not exactly true. The Democrats have represented a large majority of the people, and have listened. Their problem of late is that they aren't move until it's too late, and many of them crumble under pressure. It is clear to me that the republicans answer to no one but corporate America.

[destruction]

It appears to me that USA is heading for 3rd World status and then a bloody revolution. I hope the worst of that progression occurs after I am gone from this life. The middle class, which made that country great, is being squeezed out of existence. Neither major political party represents or answers to the people. There WILL be a time when the people won't stand for such conditions anymore.

Sounds like SOMEBODY didn't have his SOMA today...

[marxthespot_]

I can't believe that Ralph Nader has any credibility left....He runs for president every four years to basically spoil the election for the party that is leading in the polls - sometimes it has worked, sometimes not.