Ralph Nader is running for president again—he stops in Buffalo on Friday

“I was looking at my position papers from ’04, and almost without exception everything is worse,” Ralph Nader said Tuesday afternoon.

Nader, whose long career as a consumer rights advocate is now overshadowed by his runs for the presidency in 2000 and 2004, spoke to AV by phone.

Ralph Nader

“More deficits, more war, more corporate takeover of our country. Higher fuel prices, higher medicine prices, more despair among the citizenry. More falling behind for 80 percent of the workers, the rich get richer, more bailouts for the crooks on Wall Street. So it’s hardly lacking in terms of evidence as to why voters should have an alternative choice here, in addition to the two corporate parties.”

And so Ralph is running again. His running mate is Matthew Gonzalez, a former deputy public defender and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. They’ve raised about $500,000 so far and aim to raise $10 million in all, through the campain Web site (votenader.org) and events. Nader will be in Buffalo this Friday for a $50 per plate luncheon at Ukrainian American Civic Center (205 Military Avenue). April 25 is Ukrainian Good Friday, and the menu has been set accordingly: holubsti, vareneka, borscht, kapusta, and kutia, washed down by Slavic beer. After lunch, Nader will give a press conference, and then a talk at 2:30pm, for which the campaign asks attendees offer a $10 donation.

Nader says that in the past 15 years, under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, giant corporations have consolidated their control of US government and the nation’s public resources. “Not one department or agency has escaped overwhelming corporate control, inside and outside the agencies,” he said, noting that the bureaucracies and leadership of federal departments are increasingly manned by executives from the industries that the departments are supposed to regulate, whily lobbyists’ money subverts Congressional oversight. “It’s the corporate state in its most maturing level. It’s on a collision course with American democracy, and democracy is losing. Losing, losing, losing.”

Nader regards a Hillary Clinton or a John McCain presidency as insurace that the corporate takeover of the public sphere will continue unabated. Asked how he feels about Barack Obama, whom many progressives have adopted as their candidate, Nader said, “The same…His record as a senator was quite mediocre and quite concessionary to corporate demands. He’s no Wellstone. He’s not a challenging senator. That’s how I judge these people. He’s got a different style, it happens to be a hip style. He excites young people. He’s got a good, well-honed speech down that’s short on specifics, but the most exciting speeches are short on specifics. I don’t see him making much of a change; he’s not willing to confront power and take it on.”

Nader cites a poll in which 28 percent of Clinton supporters said they’d vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic Party’s nominee. He thinks that those voters will gravitate to the Nader/Gonzalez ticket once they fully understand what McCain represents. He expects to win some support from true conservatives as well, based on traditional conservative opposition to interventionist wars and public bailouts for Wall Street investment banks.

For progressives in dying Rust Belt cities, Nader offers a three-pronged solution for urban rejuvenation:

“One way is public spending,” he said. “What are we doing spending $14 million an hour destroying Iraq when we should be building drinking water system upgrades, schools, clinics, libraries, public buildings, sewage treatment systems, public transit? That would create a lot of economic activity and good jobs that can’t be exported to China.

“The second thing is to recognize that what’s coming is a re-conversion of our economy,” he continued, arguing that our old, polluting industrial technologies are going to be supplanted by sustainable industries that are by nature decentralized—“They involve people’s homes, and people’s apartment buildings”—which means that these new industries will be localized, and a city like Buffalo will not necessarily suffer so deeply its loss of old industries or its remove from the economic and political power centers of the country.

Finally, Nader argues that we need to re-negotiate trade agreements with countries that cannot meet basic labor and product safety guidelines, impose equitable tariffs and direct the resulting revenues to communities that have been hollowed out by trade disparities.

Asked what he expects to achieve in this, his third run at the presidency, Nader reiterates what he has said in the past were the legacies of his first two runs: “We’ll organize a lot of progressives who otherwise would have nowhere to go. A lot of young people, you know, they’re going to be running for office and mobilizing in the future. You have to keep the progressive agenda on the table. I think we’ll put some pressure on the mainstream candidates, the corporate candidates. We’ll highlight the civil rights issues about access obstruction by state laws which basically deprive voters of choice. We’ll highlight the need to get out of Iraq.”

And how will he answer if, say, Obama should win the Democratic nomination and his campaign accuses Nader of playing the spoiler?

“I remember when you were at four percent, Barack, so stop your talking and drop your political bigotry, because we all have an equal right to run for election. We’re either all spoilers, because we’re all trying to get votes from one another, or none of us are spoilers. That’s my answer.”

—geoff kelly