[Sosfbay-discuss] Ralph Nader interview transcript

[Drew Johnson]

Ralph Nader interview video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22302093#22302093

Transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22311746/

MATTHEWS: Then Ralph Nader.  A new documentary, “An Unreasonable Man,”
tracks his life and political career.  So what‘s he planning for ‘08?

{...}

Coming up, the man some say is responsible for the election of George W.
Bush.  In fact, a lot of people say it.  Ralph Nader is coming here.

{...}

MATTHEWS:  Welcome back to HARDBALL.  That was a clip (SIC) from a new
documentary called “An Unreasonable”—wait a minute.  That wasn‘t—anyway
(INAUDIBLE) political career of former presidential candidate Ralph Nader
airing tomorrow on PBS.  Ralph Nader‘s here to talk about his role in the
2008 race.  Nader is also the author of “The 17 Traditions.”  I have to
ask you about your book, first of all.

RALPH NADER, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Yes.  You owe an apology to
my mother, wherever she is, bless her soul.  You said in ‘04 that she
never gave us sweets when we were growing up.  This is 17 ways my mom and
dad raised their four children in a factory town in Connecticut in the
Depression and World War II.  And it‘s extremely valuable for parents
today with young children.  It‘s the only book I have ever written that
everybody loves.

MATTHEWS:  So, you are giving advice now about raising kids?

NADER:  No.  I am just a scribe for my parents...

MATTHEWS:  OK.

NADER:  ... who had very good judgment.  You should do it for your son, too.

MATTHEWS:  I like all parental advice.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about political advice.  You are a man of the
progressive spectrum.

Is there anybody in this campaign you like the looks of that can win, so
that you wouldn‘t...

NADER:  Well...

MATTHEWS:  ... have to run?  Like, for example—let me run through them—do
you like Barack Obama?  Do you like John Edwards?  I assume you like some
things about Kucinich.  But about those two front-running candidates,
could you support either one of those guys?

NADER:  I do like Kucinich.

But the front-runners, Edwards now has the most progressive message

across a broad spectrum of corporate power damaging the interests of

workers, consumers, taxpayers, of any candidate I have—leading candidate

I have seen in years.

MATTHEWS:  well, he is with you, I mean, very pro-labor, wants labor
reform, wants to get rid of Taft-Hartley, a lot of things, very much for
the progressive line.  What problem would you have with this guy at this
point?  Any?

NADER:  Well, let‘s see if he wins.

The key phrase is when he says he doesn‘t want to replace a corporate
Republican with a corporate Democrat.

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

NADER:  That‘s very key.

I mean, he raises the issue of the concentration of power and wealth in a
few hands that are working against the interests of the vast majority of
American people.  The data, the documents are overwhelming in that
respect.

MATTHEWS:  People aren‘t used to this discussion of structural change
since the ‘60s.  It‘s unusual in American politics to be this clear and
stark.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  That‘s right.  That‘s right.

MATTHEWS:  When you say corporate reform, or you say you don‘t like the
way the corporations dominate American life, politically, socially,
economically, what is your main argument?

NADER:  The main argument is what 72 percent of the American people told
“Newsweek”—“BusinessWeek,” rather, in 2000, that corporations have too
much control over their lives.  That means they have control over their
jobs.  They can ship them abroad.  They can give 47 million workers a
non-living wage, one of every three workers.

They can block any kind of health care of all Americans, which results in
thousands of deaths every year who can‘t afford health care, according to
the Institute of Medicine.  They can distort the public budget, huge
military expenditures, half of the operating budget.

MATTHEWS:  So, what is the alternative to corporate power?

NADER:  Sovereignty of the people.  It‘s people taking back their
government.  It‘s people cleaning up campaign corruption, making sure the
votes are counted, putting public funding for public campaigns.

It‘s empowering workers to form more unions.  It‘s controlling Congress,
535 people, who put their shoes on every day, like you and me.  They‘re
out of control, the majority.  The Democrats have been caving in the last
few months, again, on energy, on the war, on the food farm bill, on civil
liberties.  You can‘t make a long enough list...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Why do labor—let me ask you about big labor.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  When you and I were growing up, it was George (INAUDIBLE)...

NADER:  Yes.  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  ... the guy with the big cigar.  He would walk on the Hill, and
everybody would light his cigar.

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  What happened to the power of labor?  Why did the corporations
win all the big fights?

NADER:  Well...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Because you don‘t hear of any big strikes anymore.  The
labor—we can live with the writers strike, but, in terms of big structure
of American industry, nobody—nobody is ever striking.

NADER:  The laws in NLRB are very obstructive, more obstructive than any
other Western country for workers forming unions.  Then comes NAFTA, WTO
that reduces or strips the workers of bargaining.

MATTHEWS:  By creating a global labor market and everything else.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  ... all the resources.

NADER:  You guys in this factory in Louisiana, you want to start a union? 
We will be over the border.  We will be in China in a few months.  So...

MATTHEWS:  And that‘s how it works?

NADER:  That‘s how it works.  And the other thing is...

MATTHEWS:  Well, what happens?  You are tough on corporations.

NADER:  Yes.  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  And that‘s what you do.  You are a reformer.  But what happens
when Chrysler—this is what I worry about—when the Chryslers sell their
companies to Cerberus, to some equity company, that has absolutely no
personal responsibility or corporate responsibility for workers‘
retirement, for the health care of an 80-year-old guy whose family worked
three generations for a company making cars?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  What happens when that happens?  Won‘t we wish we had the
corporations back again?

NADER:  Yes.

No.  What it—well, actually, the private equity are stripping the
shareholders and investors of any power over them.

MATTHEWS:  OK.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  I have got to ask you.

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  We talked about your book, “Seventeen Traditions,” by Ralph
Nader.  It‘s available in bookstores, right?

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Let me ask you about politics.

A lot of Democrats, not on the left, center-left, mainly, blame you for
the last election, because your numbers were so damn high in Florida.  You
got almost 100,000 votes in Florida.  You had success down there.  You did
promise beforehand you weren‘t going to go into contested states, right?

NADER:  I didn‘t.

MATTHEWS:  Didn‘t you promise that?

NADER:  No.  That‘s what that movie will show you beyond any reasonable
doubt...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  You never promise that?

NADER:  No.

What I said was, it‘s a 50-state race.  I wasn‘t going to have any
favorites.  By the way, Gore won in Florida.  Lots of people think Gore
won in Florida, including reporters in your profession.

MATTHEWS:  Well, it smelled like that when I was down there before the
election.

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  But he didn‘t get the numbers.

NADER:  Yes.

And by pushing Gore to take more progressive policies, unlike what
Lieberman wanted him to do...

MATTHEWS:  Yes?

NADER:  ... social scientists have concluded that the Green campaign got
more votes for Gore than drew votes from him.

MATTHEWS:  By pulling him over to the left...

NADER:  Yes.  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  ... you think you succeeded in making him more attractive to
the middle?

NADER:  That‘s been documented.  Every time he went out after the oil,
drug, insurance companies...

MATTHEWS:  Yes, he did a lot of that.  He was trying to catch you.

NADER:  ... his polls—his polls went up.

MATTHEWS:  There‘s no doubt.

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  You were pulling around 9 percent.  He got you down lower than
that because he was pulling from the left, right?

NADER:  Yes.  Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  I knew what he was doing.

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  But a lot of people think that pulled him away from the center.

NADER:  That‘s—no, no.  Basically, it‘s a false assessment of what
happened in 2000.  You repeated it again in the intro...

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

NADER:  ... which you should be ashamed of.

MATTHEWS:  No, no, I‘m not ashamed of it, because the original draft was
much tougher.

NADER:  The other thing is—the other thing is...

MATTHEWS:  What I‘m saying is—I wrote, most people...

NADER:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  ... obviously, many people—I‘m talking, every time I talk to a
real Democrat, in other words somebody who is really the kind of person
who works for the Democratic Party, they blame you.  They‘re quite clear
about it.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  Yes.  That‘s because they don‘t want any competition.  They want a
monopoly of liberal and progressive voters.  What‘s new, right?  That‘s
the same thing that you see...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Well, then you are admitting you are splitting the vote.

NADER:  No, no, no.

If they took the agenda—we have a Web site open, still, votenader.org,
from ‘04.  You look at that agenda, and you ask yourself, wouldn‘t the old
Democrats have taken it away, and gotten more votes, living wage, full
universal health care, restructuring of the tax system, giving more voice
to ordinary folks?

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  They didn‘t.  And that‘s the reason they lost.

MATTHEWS:  But, if you got robbed of an election, and you felt you had
been robbed like Gore, and you saw a guy like you, as an attractive man of
the left, and have gotten 100,000 votes in Florida, 20-some-thousand in
New Hampshire, you would say, wait a minute.  I got my votes shaved.  This
guy shaved me.  He took off my percent.  Look at these numbers.  He took
away my winning percentages.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  What you are not looking at is a quarter of a million Democrats in
Florida who voted for Bush.  You are not looking at what Jeb Bush did with
Kathleen (sic) Harris to steal the election.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  By the way, ask Gore why he thinks he won the election and it

was stolen from him/

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  He may be more genteel about it.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  We shouldn‘t do that.  We should have more voices and choices.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Is it possible that Ralph Nader will be part of the Democratic
coalition come next summer, that it‘s possible that the nominee is Barack
Obama, for example?  Is there a plausibility that you will be out there
endorsing him come next November, if he were the nominee?

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  No...

MATTHEWS:  Barack?

NADER:  Because he doesn‘t have the agenda.

If Edwards wins, if he wins the whole nomination, and he doesn‘t back off,
as they do when they win the nomination...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  He‘s in contention for Green Party support?

NADER:  Well, the people in Iowa and New Hampshire have to ask themselves
one question.  Who is going to fight for them?

MATTHEWS:  You don‘t think Barack has got it?

(CROSSTALK)

NADER:  It‘s enough that millions of voters vote for politicians who vote
against their interests.  We have got to get over that.  This issue is
about the voters.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  I am amazed that you have now excluded Barack Obama from the
progressive coalition.

NADER:  He has excluded himself by the statements he has made,
unfortunately.  He is a lot smarter than his public statements, which are
extremely conciliatory to concentrated power and big business.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Thank you.

The name of your book is “The Seventeen Traditions.”  It‘s about?

NADER:  How my parents raised their four children.  It‘s very helpful to
parents today.  And, tomorrow, the movie.

MATTHEWS:  Good, the movie is called “The Unreasonable Man”—“An
Unreasonable Man.”  And you have pride in that title?

NADER:  Well, it‘s not my title.  It‘s not my movie.  But it will motivate...

MATTHEWS:  Are you an unreasonable man?

(LAUGHTER)

NADER:  It will motivate people to become more active.

MATTHEWS:  Thank you.  Thank you, my—one of my heroes, Ralph Nader,
despite what you have just seen.

(LAUGHTER)

{...}

{Another mention of Nader's interview from later in the program}

COOK:  I think Edwards gives—listen to Ralph Nader.  He gives the most
unfiltered, liberal populist message in this race.

MATTHEWS:  He‘s to the left of the other candidates?

COOK:  Absolutely.  I think that maybe the key, is that, you know, duh, a
guy running to the left in a Democratic caucus.