Nader's Criticisms of the Democrats are Validated

Unlike the kid-glove treatment received by George W. Bush by the Democratic Party in 2004, the vitriol and contempt that was leveled against Ralph Nader was unprecedented. Liberal buffoons like Michael Moore, an erstwhile supporter of Nader during the 2000 election, pleaded with Americans to vote for John Kerry and ignore Nader's "egomaniac and Quixotic" candidacy. "Outside of Jerry Falwell, I can't think of anybody I have greater contempt for than Ralph Nader," said long-time Clinton acolyte James Carville on CNN's Crossfire. Legal teams from the Democratic Party were dispatched across the country to overturn and prevent Nader from being placed on ballots. Given how closely aligned the Democrats were to the same corporate interests that the Republican party were beholden to, it is quite understandable why the Democrats fought the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader more vigorously than any of the Republicans in the past three presidential elections cycles.

It is my opinion, if Nader had been allowed into the election debates of 2008, his contrarian arguments as observed above, would have turned the tidal waves of young and naive evangelical "Yes we can!" voters into "What are we doing!" with these corporate/democratic party transvestites.

Chris Hedges, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and former war correspondent, in his posting "Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere with Obama" states the following:

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.

What Democratic voters should have done instead of belittling Ralph Nader's candidacy and fawning for the 'chosen-one' is listen to Nader when he described the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama as indebted to the corporations and lobbyists of K-street, and in the end, would (as usual) not deliver on their campaign promises of change and reform.

In arena after arena -- government, workplace, marketplace, media, environment, education, science, technology-- the dominant players are large corporations. What countervailing forces that our society used to depend upon for some balance are not in retreat against the aggressive expansion of corporate influence far beyond its traditional mercantile boundaries?

The enlarged power that corporations deploy to further increase their revenues and socialize their costs comes from many sources-- old and new. Roughly eighty percent of the money contributed to federal candidates come from business interests. The mobility to export capital has given transnational companies major leverage against local, state and federal officials, not to mention against organized and unorganized labor. The swell of corporate welfare handouts has reached new depths. The contrived complexity of many financial and other services serves to confuse, deplete and daunt consumers who lose significant portions of their income in a manipulative marketplace. Alliances, joint ventures and other complex collaborations between should-be competitors have made a mockery of what is left of antitrust enforcement.

- Ralph Nader, Introduction to Mokhiber and Weissman's "Corporate Predators" 1999.