[Sosfbay-discuss] Nader analysis of the election on DemocracyNOW toda

[JamBoi]

[usgp-media] Nader analysis of the election on DemocracyNOW today
Date:	Wed, 8 Nov 2006 15:21:41 -0500

For analysis on Tuesday's election and the Democratic victory in the
House, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader
joins us in Washington.

    * Ralph Nader, ran for president in 2000 as a candidate on the
Green 
Party ticket. In 2004 he ran for President as an Independent. He is the

author of many books including "The Good Fight: Declare Your
Independence and Close the Democracy Gap."

www.democracynow.org 
NADER TRANSCRIPT:


AMY GOODMAN: Last night, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, head of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, vowed reforms would be in
order.

      REP. RAHM EMANUEL: The American people never lose their zeal for 
reform, and neither can we. The old era of irresponsibility is over,
and the new era of real reform has just begun.

AMY GOODMAN: For analysis on Tuesday's election and the Democratic
victory in the House, we're joined by consumer advocate and two-time
presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, in Washington, D.C. Welcome to
Democracy Now!

RALPH NADER: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. What is your assessment of 
Election Day and the results?

RALPH NADER: Well, the assessment is that to the extent the Democrats
gained the majority in the House, it was on the backs of some very
right-wing Democrats who won the election against right-wing Republican
incumbents. And so, there was no mandate for any progressive agenda.
For example, in 1974, when the Democrats swarmed over the Republicans,
it was on the backs of many very progressive Democratic challengers who
were elected. And the same is true in the '60s, when some very
progressive senators like Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin was elected.
But not this time. They're going to have to deal with a lot of Blue Dog
Democrats, and that's going to give Pelosi great pause as she tries to
maneuver a few things through the Congress.

The other thing that is good, though, is that there's some very good
veteran chairmen who are coming in: George Miller, Henry Waxman, Ed
Markey and, of course, John Conyers. But to counter that, both John
Conyers and Nancy Pelosi have taken the impeachment issue right off the
table, before the election, and that means there's going to be no Bush
accountability for his war crimes and his inflation of unlawful
presidential authority.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Ralph Nader, when asked -- when Nancy Pelosi was
asked what would be the difference if the Democrats took over, she said
subpoena 
power.

RALPH NADER: Well, alright, that gets to a real gridlock situation. The

Democrats will throw a lot of subpoenas at the White House. The White
House will, of course, drag it on and on and on. And the public will
get fed up with it. The White House has great reserves in dragging it
on and on and on. Because Bush can't rely on Republicans as a majority
of the Congress, he's going to inflate his presidential power even more
extremely and unlawfully, in the opinion of many legal scholars, to do
through the inherent power of the presidency, as Dick Cheney and Bush
have talked about, what he can't do through the Congress, which he no
longer controls.

But notice that, in all the debates I've heard between the Senate
candidates and the House candidates over the last few weeks, there was
almost no mention of corporate power, the 800-pound gorilla, no mention
of corporate crime, no drive for corporate reform. And yet, if you look
at the forward issues in the country, who's saying no to healthcare,
universal healthcare? Corporate power. Who's saying no to a real
crackdown on corporate crime against consumers, especially inner-city
consumers? Corporate power. Who's saying no to cleaning up the corrupt
tens of billions of dollars in military contracting fraud, like
Halliburton? Corporate power. Who's saying no to reform of hundreds of
billions of dollars of diversion of your tax dollars, America, to
corporate subsidies, handouts and giveaways? Corporate power. And yet,
reporters and candidates hardly mentioned it. Kevin Zeese, the Green
Party candidate, did in Maryland for the Senate. Howie Hawkins did in
New York, the Green Party candidate for the Senate.

AMY GOODMAN: And certainly, Bernie Sanders makes that a major issue. It
is the main point of his politics. And he's been elected. He's going to
be the first socialist senator in the US Senate.

RALPH NADER: Well, there won't be much socialism to him, but he'll be a

fresh voice, a very welcome voice along with Sherrod Brown. So that,
you 
know, you can stop certain bad things in the Senate with two or three 
senators near the end of the session, so -- the way Metzenbaum and
Abourezk did in the '70s -- so that's a welcome break. But there are
some --

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, let me ask you about Connecticut, because
that's where you've spent a good amount of the last months, and here,
yes, the independent candidate Joseph Lieberman beat out the antiwar
Democratic candidate who had unseated him in the Democratic primary,
Ned Lamont.

RALPH NADER: Well, that was a bizarre type of situation, because the 
Republican candidate was not able to get more than 10% of the vote. So 
Lieberman got 70% of the Republican voters in Connecticut, and that's
what won for him. He would have been history, if the Republicans
respected their own voters in Connecticut and nominated someone who
could get 20%, 25%, 30% of the vote. He's going to be pretty
insufferable. I mean, you know, Joe's inherent self-righteousness now
is ballooning by the hour, and he's going to view himself as a
kingmaker if the swing in the Senate is one seat. But he was the
darling of the big business lobby, Chamber of Commerce, here in
Washington, who anointed him. And that's the power and greed lobby. And
he was their favorite Democratic senator, only one of two.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it absolutely known that he will caucus with Democrats,

number one? And number two, is there any discussion about him --
perhaps the Bush administration, who's deeply indebted to him, offering
him, say, Secretary of Defense, if they don't stick with Rumsfeld, to
get him out of the Senate to put in a Republican? And would he take it?

RALPH NADER: There's no doubt in my mind he's going to caucus with the 
Democrats. He knows where his bread is buttered, where his friends are,

where his contributors are, one. And he can play that both sides of the

aisle, as he has for years as a Democrat. And he can get a committee
chair if the Democrats win. I don't think he'll take an executive
position. This is a failing administration. He would never want to be a
Secretary of Defense in a Bush administration.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the other congressional races in Connecticut?
Very significant. You're talking about corporate power. Nancy Johnson
is one of those Republican incumbents who went down, very well-known
for representing the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry.

RALPH NADER: Yes. That was a surprise. She worked the precincts very 
carefully over the years, always went back home. But I think her
opponent two years ago, [Maloney], congressman, when they were
redistricted, damaged her credibility by pouring ads showing she was
the agent of the drug industry and the big HMOs. I think he set her up
for defeat by Chris Murphy yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the war, this being a vote against war? And
what 
does that mean for Democrats right now? What happens?

RALPH NADER: Well, it means vagueness. Nancy Pelosi was very vague. She
said there's got to be a redirection, there's got to be a change. But
the Democrats don't have the guts to really have a withdrawal plan. 
Internationalizing the situation there; having internationally
supervised elections; having people of stature bring the three
sectarian groups together, as they have in the past -- the Kurds and
Shiites and Sunnis in the '50s arranged a modest autonomy within a
unified Iraq -- and bringing in, in an Islamic nation, peacekeepers,
these things require real high-level diplomacy, and the Democrats, you
know, are not in the executive branch. Bush is going to stay the
course. He's already announced that he's going to be in Iraq until the
last day of his office. So this will be a test of Hillary Clinton and
others, and I don't think they're going to be able to meet it.

AMY GOODMAN: What about what's happening in the Middle East, in Israel,

Palestine, Lebanon? The latest attack on Beit Hanun has killed
something 
like eighteen people, thirteen of one family. You certainly spoke out
over the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. Will this ever become a major
issue in the US Congress?

RALPH NADER: Certainly the Democrats are not going to make it a major
issue. Nancy Pelosi and others have been with the pro-Israeli lobby for
years. Certainly Bush and Cheney aren't. They don't understand that the
greatest move toward national security in our country and in the
so-called effort against terrorism would be to solve the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The majority of both people would like a
two-state solution. There are extremists in Israel that would like to
continue to dominate the West Bank and harass Gaza and block an exit of
the people there for traveling and for export of goods. So it's just --
it's now a steady state, destruction every day of innocent people, as
you say, thirteen in one family. The Israeli military know how to
pacify Gaza. They know they could take over that town, where these
primitive rockets that are wildly inadequate are fired. But it serves
the interest of certain political interests in Israel to continue this
kind of conflict.

This is an eminently resolvable conflict. There's a lot of former
Israeli military and intelligence people who know how to do it, people
in the Knesset who know what needs to be done. But as long as the US
basically says to whoever is in charge, "You can do whatever you want
over there, and we'll still pump $3 - $4 billion and cluster bomb
weapons, etc.," there's not going to be a resolution. As long as
there's no resolution, there's going to be an inflammation increasing
all over the Islamic world, and our national security will be
compromised.

This campaign, this election, Amy, was basically a mandate-less
election for the Democrats. There was really no mandate other than
against Bush and do something about Iraq. Domestically, virtually no
mandate about rearranging of power, shifting it from corporations to
workers, consumers, taxpayers, to communities.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, you mentioned Sherrod Brown, certainly will
be one of the most progressive members of a new US Senate. Yet, in
those waning days, as he was running for this Senate seat that he has
just won from Ohio, he voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Can you talk about the significance of this act?

RALPH NADER: That was a bad sign. That was, I think, not just a
strategic mistake by Sherrod Brown. He's going to regret this. It was a
character deficiency, just like, you know, Hillary Clinton's character
deficiency. She refused to debate three third party Senate candidates,
including Howie Hawkins in the Green Party, and the League of Women
Voters was so upset, they withdrew co-sponsorship of the debate. We've
got to focus on the ability of the Democrats to become very, very
politically cynical in order to win. I don't think Sherrod Brown had to
do that to win. That is a monstrous laceration of our constitutional
rights, that Military 
Commissions. I hope it will be declared unconstitutional in its noxious

provisions by the Supreme Court.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton. There is some discussion
that if, in fact, Democrats do take the Senate -- there are two very
tightly 
contested races now, of course, Virginia and Montana, although at this
point Democrats have very narrow leads in them -- the possibility that
she would become the Majority Leader of the Senate.

RALPH NADER: Well, I don't think so. It's very hard to be Majority
Leader of the Senate and run for president, which she's going to start
to do right away. I think what we're seeing here is a drive for a
coronation in the Democratic nomination. As Mark Warner drops out,
maybe John Kerry has been damaged, I mean, she's going to have a huge
war chest and just march to the nomination. And to do that, she's got
to be absent a great deal from the Senate. And when you're Majority
Leader in the Senate, you've got to be the valet for a lot of senators
and you can't go out to Colorado or California or New York or West
Virginia, as a presidential candidate has to.

AMY GOODMAN: The issue of money and politics, something you take on in
a 
very big way. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics, at least 2.8 billion dollars were spent in this election,
making these the most expensive midterm elections in history. I want to
talk about this big money in the big parties, the two big parties, and
also third party politics today, and what you saw around the country.

RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the mess with the voting machinery and
the registration situation, this country is a mockery of obstructing
people to vote, going back to the post-Civil War era. Now they have new
ways to do it through these machines, through not distributing the
machines, through challenging people's voting credentials. There's no
other Western democracy that requires registration. In Canada, if you
are counted as part of the regular census, you vote, period.

And so, what we need in this country, first of all, is a complete
reform of electoral laws, including one federal standard for candidates
running for federal office, for Congress and for the President, not 50
different state standards and more county standards. There needs to be
criminal 
prosecutions. Notice you can obstruct people's right to vote, you can
do 
what happened in Ohio and Florida, and because both parties want to be
able to do it, if they're in power, at the state level, there's no
prosecution tradition here, as there is, say, for procurement fraud. So
nobody goes to jail. So, every two or four years, it's going to happen,
more and more and more. And the number of ways that people can be
obstructed from voting -- votes can be miscounted; that people can be
falsely designated as ex-felons; the extent to which voting rolls can
be shrunken, like in Cleveland, Ohio, by a Republican state government,
Blackwell, Secretary of State -- all this is going to happen again and
again, unless you have crackdowns, unless you have task forces that
will prosecute these violations, and unless you have a national debate
about universal voting, Amy.

We've got to ask ourselves -- jury duty is the only civic duty in our 
Constitution. We have a whole Bill of Rights, but we have very few
duties. And if we have to obey thousands of laws passed by lawmakers,
it seems to me that having voting be a civic duty, as it is in
Australia and Brazil and some other countries, is the way to clear away
all these manipulations and obstructions, because if you have a legal
duty to vote --

AMY GOODMAN: You mean, mandatory.

RALPH NADER: Yes. If you have the duty to vote, then obstructing it
becomes a very serious crime, whereas now it's just, you know, the
political game the two parties play against one another. And the
discussion of mandatory voting would include a binding "none of the
above." So you can go to the polls or absentee vote for the ballot
line, you can vote write-in, you can vote for your own person, write in
your own name, or you can vote for a binding "none of the above." I
think that takes care of any civil liberties problems. But it should be
decided by a special national referendum.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we have to wrap up, but I just want to ask: 
Hillary Clinton spent something like $30 million on an almost
uncontested race at the point where, you know -- of yesterday,
certainly getting more nationally known. Are you going to be running
for president in 2008?

RALPH NADER: It's too early to say. I do want to give you one quick
sidebar, Amy. In Morgan County, USA, in Morgan County, West Virginia,
with a 60% Republican registration advantage, the incumbent for county
commissioner was defeated overwhelmingly, by 20 points, by a
challenger. She beat him by 20 points. And that was done by
person-to-person campaigning, which I think is going to be the way
progressives in this country are going to win elections. This is a
stunning victory over a Republican machine that ought to be studied, in
Morgan County, West Virginia.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I want to thank you very much for joining us,

two-time presidential candidate, joining us from Washington, D.C.

___________________

JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com



 
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