Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama By Chris Hedges

[Demeter]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20090810_nader_was_right_liberals_are_going_nowhere_with_obama/


The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. They were right. If a few million of us had had the temerity to stand behind our ideals rather than our illusions and the empty slogans peddled by the Obama campaign, we would have a platform. We forgot that social reform never comes from accommodating the power structure but from frightening it. The Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists who battled for women’s rights, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement knew that the question was not how do we get good people to rule—those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities—but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us. These mass movements were the engines for social reform, the correctives to our democracy and the true protectors of the rights of citizens. We have surrendered this power. It is vital to reclaim it. Where is the foreclosure movement? Where is the robust universal health care or anti-war movement? Where is the militant movement for sustainable energy?....

“There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “They have bought into the belief that if it protests, it will be brutalized by the police. If they have Muslim names, they will be subjected to Patriot Act treatment. This has scared the hell out of the underclass. They will be called terrorists...
“They have been broken,” Nader said of the working class. “How many times have their employers threatened them with going abroad? How many times have they threatened the workers with outsourcing? The polls on job insecurity are record-high by those who have employment. And the liberal intelligentsia have failed them. They have bought into carping and making lecture fees as the senior fellow at the institute of so-and-so. Look at the top 50 intelligentsia—not one of them supported our campaign, not one of them has urged for street action and marches.”...

[BzaDem]

1. IBTL.

:popcorn:

[FrenchieCat]

2. Anyone saying this dumbass shit 8 months in, needs to go to the townhalls

and stand with the other dumbasses.

We wouldn't have shit but McCain/Palin if some would have listened to Nader.

So much dumbass bullshit and way too many assholes.

[Luminous Animal]

5. So, what you are saying is that Obama will stand strong with the

public option and he will stand with the 55 in the House and will not sign a bill with out it.

[FrenchieCat]

11. I'm saying that Obama never called himself the Magic Negro,

and I'm not sure why those who criticize him the most
believes that he is. That's what I'm saying.

[Luminous Animal]

16. Hmmm... I thought that the Magic Negro

was more a sociological comment. You know, assuaging white guilt, and all that. It had nothing to do with Obama, being, (ya know) actually, magic.

Poor attempt at slight of hand.

[Luminous Animal]

3. Ex-fucking- actly...

"The Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists who battled for women’s rights, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement knew that the question was not how do we get good people to rule—those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities—but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us."

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. I owe nader nothing, nader & mckinney have accomplished nothing

and never will. When they stood behind nader we got bush.

[Luminous Animal]

6. Don't forget the 10 million Democrats who voted for Bush...

and Nader has accomplished, politically, more in 10 minutes than you could ever hope to accomplish in a lifetime.

[The_Casual_Observer]

8. He accompished LESS than nothing. He is shit.

name one god damn thing he has done in the lat 30 years, other than not but a suit of clothes.

[Luminous Animal]

13. His wealth and activitism fund the organizations that continue to secure the following

causes that he had a leadership role in enacting... Clean water & air, disabilities act, safe cars, air travelers rights, product safety... He has spent his entire life advocating for many of the issues that are important here on DU... pro single payer health care, anti corporate personhood, and a fierce proponent of citizen activism.

It is as important to win the battle as it is to maintain the ground.

Ten million of your fellow Dems voted for Bush. It would be best for the Democratic Party to figure out how they lost their vote than scream, "Fuck Nader", as if that will be the remedy for all their woes.

[Butch350]

35. FUCK NADER!

[Butch350]

33. Then why in the fuck won't the people elect him to POTUS?

[Aragorn]

44. I'm with you on this

as Nader and Kucinich, for example, are far better representatives of citizens' needs and rights than anyone else. Profane arguments against them, while simultaneously suggesting "town hall" data are NOT supportive of this argument, simply underline the point.

Anyone (practically) can post on DU. Anyone (practically) can vote.

Wasn't it Ben Franklin who answered questions about the constitutional convention by saying "You have a republic. Now see if you can keep it".

We do not need a violent revolution. We just need to wake up.

2+2=5

[Ken Burch]

9. It's the DLC's fault that Nader pulled the vote he did in 2000

That campaign proved the Democrats had gone too far to the right.

There was never any reason to give the DLC the chance to make this party a left-free zone. Centrism is conservatism, as the Nineties proved.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. If you voted for nader you voted for bush. Case closed.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Nope. I voted for Nader.

[Butch350]

34. Too bad not many others did.

[Ken Burch]

15. You can't just argue that people were obligated to vote for whoever the Dems nominated

just to prove they weren't voting for Bush.

And in the previous Nader campaign(1996)there were no meaningful differences between Clinton or Dole, so no ground would have been lost even if Dole had won, because all the ground had already been lost.

Our party should never ever make people settle for "we're not as bad as the Republicans". 2000 was when the chickens came home to roost on that.

It's the DLC's fault. Please, for the love of God, accept that.

The DLC'ers themselves were never loyal to the party. Why did THEY have the right to demand loyalty when they never showed any?

[Chef Eric]

17. If you voted for Gore, you voted for a ticket with a Republican on it.

So stop acting all high and mighty.

[TankLV]

26. Ouch! I never thought of that! and ain't THAT the TRUTH after all...!

sad, isn't it?!

[Chef Eric]

28. Sad indeed. nt

[girl gone mad]

20. And if you voted for Gore, you voted for Lieberman...

so...

[pokercat999]

29. If YOU voted for Democrat or Republican you voted for the

Corporate approved candidate. Nader was not the problem, corporate money/control in the election process is the root problem.

[Butch350]

36. Well then, it looks like the libertarians won't get elected to shit then.

[pokercat999]

42. That's the good news. Are you sure you don't mean

progressives? Libertarians are the folks that want to sell off the state and national parks and believe the only function for government is national defense and maybe police and courts....and with companies like Blackwater they would probably outsource those functions as well.

[struggle4progress]

7. Win or lose, we still have to do the same thing: organize to kick ass for our objectives.

Waiting for Obama, or anybody else, to do what we want done, will never work

Neither will just beating up our closest allies for not moving fast enough

When we treat our political fights as a full time business, instead of a now-and-then, and when we plan our moves with as much diligence as if we were at war -- then we'll win

Until then, we'll just bitch and moan a lot

[Aragorn]

45. how about this?

Let's not treat it as if we were at war against corporate interests. (We are of course but they have all the bullets and stuff.) Let's treat it as if we were in a Great Depression. (Not much of a leap.)

If enough people stood up to corporate interests (oops, sounds like Nader) we would use proven effective tactics like general strikes, and we would win.

Since many corporations use financial leverage to prevent strikes, including the threat to send our jobs somewhere else, we would likely have even more hardship. We would have to HELP EACH OTHER. I can tell you, and history can tell you, this would lead to harsher tactics from the corporate masters.

One explanation for the current recession/depression is that corporations squeezed us too dry. And we let the governments bail them out while we get s****** again? And then bash one of the few people who helped citizens win a few battles against corporations?

Come on, we already have enough healthcare - not enough people get sick to shut businesses down, right? Apply that logic to any other social issue and see what you get.

[orwell]

12. Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges...

..two big Obama fans from way back.

Let me know if either of them ever admits they were wrong about anything.

You can throw Dave Lindorff in with them.

This must be Johnny One Note Month on DU...

[pmorlan1]

18. Corporate Democrats Need to Go

I voted for Gore and I voted for Obama. I will not vote for the Democratic candidate in the next election. I'm tired of the Democratic Party and their candidates lying to me. If Obama continues on the course he's been on - ignoring civil liberties violations and kowtowing to corporate interests I will not vote for him. In my opinion anyone that continues to support a Party that continuously kicks them to the curb is foolish. Sadly the only way to get the Democratic Party to stop dissing us is for them to lose some elections. Maybe then they will stop taking us for granted. We are not here to help them achieve their goals, they are there to help the American people achieve OUR goals.

[saltpoint]

19. Nader is cricket piss. His voice is not heard. His political projects

go nowhere, including his own pathetic bids for the White House.

He tends to speak to people who agree with him and has absolutely no mechanism to persuade anyone else to change their minds.

It would be almost impossible to find more than a half-dozen people who have LESS influence on national discourse than Ralph Nader.

He is a still-life of his own very significant failures.

[Chef Eric]

21. If Nader is so insignificant, then why do you have so many bad things to say about him? nt

[saltpoint]

23. Hi, Eric. I slap Nader because he asserts himself into the public debate.

Problem is, he is not heard and what he urges by way of reform reaches only people who agree with him in the first place.

He's cricket piss.

[depakid]

40. So the PIRGs and Public Citizen never get anything done?

:rofl:

I agree in one respect though- they'd get a LOT more done without the cowardly & complicit Dems who are ready and eager to sell everyone (except their corporate donors) out.

[saltpoint]

41. Public Citizen gets a lot done, but on quite a very small scale to say,

the Civil Rights legislation passed through the Congress in the Kennedy-Johnson era.

Ralph Nader has had extremely limited impact on issues, save for his early career work as a consumer advocate. As a national figure in the last two decades or so he has been the soul of marginality and remains so tonight.

I do not argue that he is unintelligent or resourceful or possessed of many good points worth hearing. I do argue that the Democrats you reference are the choice of voters. And that voters in Madison and Berkeley are not going to vote the same way as voters in rural Texas and hyper-rural Georgia.

The mechanism in place is the current government, established by the Founders, with both virtue and flaw. If you don't like Ben Nelson or Evan Bayh, for example, and why would you, you can donate to their primary opponents. Or you can be active and vivid in organizations like the ACLU or Public Citizen or any number of others to advance progressive tenets and change minds so that pressure is brought to bear on Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh to reflect the will of those progressive causes.

You can't do it alone. You can't do it in small numbers. Nader is not expressly alone, but he works in small numbers of people with extraordinarily limited impact.

The issue is not the merit of progressive ideas. It's how to create a climate where they are seen as imperatives by enough voters to dent the battleship.

[bvar22]

22. K&R BTL..... up to +13 now.

Everybody should listen to Nader.
He tells a lot of truth.

If The Democrats don't produce a STRONG Public Option,
it will be an admission that Nader was right.

[saltpoint]

24. Nader is a scarecrow. The harvest is brought to the table by the farmer

and his family, as it is they who do the hard work and daily work of planting.

Most birds aren't afraid of scarecrows.

[BirminghamExaminer]

25. I realize that Nader is an excellent consumer advocate so why doesn't he

shut the fuck up and advocate for health care instead of twiddling his thumbs and gleefuly saying, 'I told you so." What good is he really? He gets nothing done. He has changed nothing other than he may have had an effect on the Gore / Bush election and he was proud of that. Maybe Gore wasn't a great campaigner. Maybe he didn't have charisma but he was a hell of a better candidate than Bush. He should have fought back but maybe he was tired of the nastiness of it all.

Nader ought to go back to writing books about consumer advocacy and get out of politics. Does he really think that if HE was in Washington, he would fix everything and get Congress to go along with it? Give me a break. Nothing gets done if they don't work together and he would be a lone wolf. Maybe he would even like the Bush way of abusing executive privilege. The point is, who the f*ck cares about what Ralph Nader says any more?

[TankLV]

27. Nader is CORRECT on this one...!!!

Sorry if it chafes the obama cultists here...

While Nader has been a royal PAIN to many including me here, YOU HAVE TO GIVE HIM CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE - AND ON THIS ONE HE IS SOOO VERY SPOT ON!!!

Those who REFUSE to see is IN SPITE OF ALL THE EVIDENCE SUPPORT WHAT NADER JUST SAID, are only fooling themselves...

[saltpoint]

32. Nader is in fact frequently correct, and always quite beautifully spoken,

but he is invariably ineffective.

That's the rub, IMO.

No one with a mind would question the caliber of mind of Ralph Nader. He's extraordinarily intelligent and paints both the small details and the grand canvas. I don't recommend that anyone try to subtract from his demonstrable, and considerable, strengths.

But he is not effective in inspiring change toward reaching critical mass for sustained reform.

[Aragorn]

46. why is that?

Is it because the huge amounts of money spent to support more corporate-acceptable candidates influences enough people to vote against their own interests? (BTW gwb spent 50 mil to get elected governor of Texas, vs 5 mil by the dem.)

Or is it that most people are not smart enough to know they are voting against their own interests?

Advertising tips the balance, and campaigns are expensive ads funded by corporations.

[saltpoint]

47. I hear that point, although I'd also concede that Abraham Lincoln

advertised his services as an attorney. If a junior high runs a paper drive, a car wash, or a bake sale to raise money for a year's-end trip or new band uniforms, etc., they're engaging a similar mechanism as a politician who buys campaign ads. Some degree and purpose of promotion is at work.

I'll support the car wash, whether my car's dirty or not, just to fund a girl's volley ball team or put some new books on the library shelves. I can afford to buy a car wash and I want to live in a society where students play a sports schedule and hold band concerts and look stuff up in the library.

I'm pickier with politicians but the money alone doesn't corrupt, since Robert F. Kennedy, for example, was a man who had been born into significant privilege, yet his public positions argued for the mass elevation of the poor and the voiceless.

Layered onto U.S. social history is the notion that the individual is not very important. There's been no evolution -- or very little -- in individuality. Often (usually?) it's seen as a defiant young person who wants to abandon the family grocery store or the familly farm and strike out on their own in Chicago or New York. Social peer pressure tends to reflect economic and political realities and so U.S. politics is a defacto class war, with corporations tending to win almost every skirmish because they have the self-protective attitude and the fat wallet to bully everyone else.

In Lincoln's time, despite his own personal evolution in attitudes, plantation owners regarded certain human beings as "property" and used them as farm machinery. If we consider that attitude astonishingly cruel we also have to appreciate that Lincoln had to navigate through it as a very pervasive cultural reality. Abolition was as progressive then as say, opposition to the war in southeast Asia was in the 1960s, but critical mass was achieved in both cases. Advancing any progressive idea against an entrenched reality is messy work. Often it is also lethal work.

That's why Rosa Parks and Ted Kennedy, born into decidedly different walks of American life, should be celebrated. I want all citizens to have Rosa's self-respect and the Kennedys' empathy for the disenfranchised, but that isn't the current reality. Cindy Sheehan has the right idea about citizens objecting to government commitment to war but remains almost completely marginal. The trick is not to be a lone objector to something wrong but to persuade several thousand others to endorse and join the objection.

[MasonJar]

30. In the days of Bill Clinton we had prosperity despite the efforts of the

GOPers; we had peace and we had a president who truly cared about his fellowman, wanting to help the underpaid, the uninsured, the gays,etc. We had a president who could ommunicate with the leaders of the world and with us, the American people, with a big smile and a pat on the back. I long for the days of Clinton. He was up against almost unsurmountable odds with the vitriol of the PUGs but he stood tall and strong and faced them down. I hear complaints here about NAFTA, but Clinton grew jobs for the American people as if they were apples on a tree. I had hoped that Obama was the next step forward, but Obama is either too inexperienced in governance or just too conservative to really fight for the things I want. As the above says, he is barely a step up from W.

[bvar22]

31. Bill Clinton sold out the Working Class.

That is reality.
Sorry about your bubble.

[pokercat999]

43. I don't think Clinton created one job, I believe the Internet and

massive computerization of our businesses created millions of jobs. If anything, Clinton's policies created out sourcing opportunities for his corporate masters.

[DonCoquixote]

37. If you honestly think

That an Al Gore administration would have caused as much harm as the W. one, then I only have one thing to say to you; join your comrades in the far right, who also worship themselves and damn reason.

[BunkerHill24]

38. We gave them majority in the House, the Senate and

White House....and what have we gained from it thus far? I think we should rightly ask ourselves this question.

[grasswire]

39. Hedges had me until he mentioned Nader.

The fault here lies not so much with Obama as it does with those liberals and progressives who went all googly over him, a centrist, thinking he would do battle for their causes. Suckers. I voted for Obama; what else could we do? But I never assumed that he was going to govern like a liberal.

[Doctor_J]

48. I don't really care for Nader, but "They have been broken,”

is the absolute truth. It's a travesty that Fox News hasn't been blown to bits. The US is in the worst condition it's ever been in, because no right wing blood has been spilt during their takeover.