Ralph Nader talking:
Because candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson of the Green Party and Libertarian Party, respectively, will show that when we are in their backyard supporting their dictators overseas, military attacks everywhere—it’s been going on for a hundred years—eventually, they’re going to want to come into our backyard. Now, Trump’s not going to say that, Clinton’s not going to say that. But these two parties are going to say that. What’s really important is, we don’t have a debate on empire. We don’t have a debate that we’re all over the world, that we’re breaching national sovereignties, violating our Constitution, killing anybody the president wants to kill. And we see it in Yemen. You see it in Afghanistan, Iraq, now Syria, and many other countries. So, it’s not working. What started with a criminal gang in northeast Afghanistan has now spread into 20 countries. They’re more trained, they’re more adept in social media, they’ve got more people, and they’re heading this way.
So, Trump will only exacerbate that, because he takes everything personally in terms of his ego. He has no impulse control. And he’ll lash out with brute force, and it will only come back. And we are far more vulnerable than other countries. I mean, we totally freak out with an explosion here or a shooting there, compared to what happens in Baghdad or in Afghanistan every day. So we are extremely vulnerable. The last thing we want is someone in the White House who believes in brute force. And I’m sorry to say that Hillary Clinton has that tendency, as well, when she advances U.S. foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton is more systemically hawkish, like she’ll go and try to persuade—successfully—Barack Obama to topple the Libyan regime, which has resulted in huge areas of Africa now in total chaos and violence. What the problem is with Trump is he’s unpredictably belligerent. And he brings his personality into the White House. You cannot, as president, take every slur, every criticism, every affront from Congress or some foreign leader personally and translate that into military options.
the state terrorism is killing far more people than stateless terrorism. What’s important is, the brute force doesn’t work. You’re going against people, many of them in their twenties, who have nothing to lose. There’s nothing more dangerous than an unemployed person who has no purpose left in life except to attack the invader. And so, it’s a losing proposition.
We have to wage peace. We have to use a fraction of the money we use for armaments abroad, making things worse, dealing with healthcare and clean drinking water and agricultural co-ops—all the things—and education—all the things that will build support for a peaceful resolution of disputes and support for the United States. You know, it’s—as they say, it’s not rocket science. The proof in the pudding is that our government does not learn from its failures. There is no flunking grade for brute force in military and foreign policy. And the essence of it has to go down to us, we, the people. I mean, if—we got reasonable arms control and reduction because a few thousand people in this country organized groups like SANE in the past and led to arms control agreements between Washington and Moscow. It never takes more than 1 percent of the people representing the public sentiments of the majority to change power, to break through power. I mean, we have historical records of that going back 200 years.
Why don’t we learn from that? Because if we sit down as spectators—yeah, we’re spectators; we’re watching the debates—what an absurdity. Every city in this country is full of people who want presidential debates. So why don’t people organize? We’ll start with the Chamber of Commerce, the labor unions, the neighborhood groups in every city—Atlanta, in Seattle, in Los Angeles, in New York—and say, “The heck with this corporation that limits debates, we want the candidates to come to our city.” There’s nothing that can stop that. Why are we rationing debates? We don’t ration cosmetics. We don’t ration all kinds of trivia. Why are we rationing debates? Because we’re spectators. Because we’re told, “Shut up and shop, and once in a while look at politics,” because it’s now entertainment. I mean, Trump has turned elections from circuses to burlesque shows. And it’s making money for these corporations—CNN and Fox and others. And we’re sitting around watching it, when we have the sovereign power under the Constitution? Corporation isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution. Political parties aren’t even mentioned, Amy. Why are they controlling us? So, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and grab the reins of our country for ourselves and our posterity. There’s nothing stopping us from doing this. It’s just a sort of a, you know, resignation—whatever will be will be; let’s go back to our private lives, not be public citizens.
it is the time for Senator Sanders to mobilize, as he can, all his supporters around the country with mass rallies to put the heat on both candidates. Is anything wrong with that? He should have a mass rally in the Mall and then spread it all over the country, so you have civic pressure, citizen pressure, coming in on all the candidates to further the just pathways of our society. Why doesn’t he do that? Because, you know, Bernie Sanders hasn’t returned a call from me in 18 years. He’s a lone ranger. He doesn’t like to be pushed into more progressive action than he is willing to adhere to. As a result, millions of his voters now are in disarray. They don’t know where to go. They’re cynical. Some will go Democrat. Some will support Libertarian, Green. Some will stay home. And so this huge, wonderful effort that he launched is now aborted. It’s dissipating. So, it isn’t a matter of either/or; it’s a matter of him cutting out from the accolades to Hillary, which he doesn’t like to do—he doesn’t like to be a robot or run around the country that way—and mobilize the citizenry, which will transcend the election and start something effective after the election.
I never say who I vote for. I’m not—certainly, not going to vote for either Hillary or Trump. Listen, if I don’t have a third party to vote for, I’ll write in my vote. I will never vote for someone who is going to engage in illegal armed force, unconstitutional killing of innocent people, selling Washington to Wall Street and driving our country into the ground, all the time sugarcoating the American people on TV with rhetoric.
– swing state strategy
don’t agree. because it’s very easy. Let’s say you’re in a swing state, and you think that the least worst candidate is Hillary. What you do is you go with a Trump voter who thinks the Trump voter is the least, and you trade off. You say, “Look, you won’t vote for Trump, and I won’t vote for Hillary. Let’s make a deal, and then we’ll vote for whoever we want to in terms of our conscience, third party or whatever.” There are already computerized systems for this underway you can actually join and network, and that will get rid of that.
But what Bernie Sanders never talks about is, if we had proportional representation, instant runoff voting, all this spoiler stuff wouldn’t be around. And the idea of calling a third party “spoiler,” using the First Amendment right to run for office, is a politically bigoted word and should never be tolerated by the American people, because everyone has an equal right to run for office. Everyone is going to get votes from one another. So they’re either spoilers of one another or none of them are spoilers.
from a First Amendment point of view, first of all. You should never tell anybody to shut up. And when you run for office, it’s free speech, petition and assembly. It’s the consummate use of the First Amendment. But here—it’s a scapegoating. The Democrats could never get over how they couldn’t beat this bumbling governor from Texas, who couldn’t put a paragraph together and has a horrible record—children and women and pollution, etc., policy, right?
George W. Bush. So they scapegoat the Greens. So here’s how it goes: 300,000 registered Democrats in 2000 in Florida voted for Bush—blame the Greens. Thousands of people were misidentified as ex-felons by Katherine Harris, the secretary of state for Jeb Bush, governor of Florida—blame the Greens. The butterfly ballot, which was very deceptive and got people to vote for exactly the opposite candidate in South Florida—blame the Greens. Scalia’s political 5-4 decision, which blocked the Florida Supreme Court’s full recount in Florida—blame the Greens. The Electoral College took the victory in the popular vote from Gore—blame the Greens. Gore loses his Tennessee state, where he represented in Congress for years—blame the Greens. It’s total scapegoating. It’s disgusting that extremely smart people, who happen to be Democratic Party apparatchiks, like Howard Dean, who’s now in a corporate firm that lobbies for the healthcare and drug industry, by the way, and never identified as such by The New York Times and others who quote him—he is now reviving this 2000 nonsense.
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Ralph Nader
longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate. His new book is titled Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think.
— source democracynow.org