Corporate America's Worst Nightmare: A Q&A With Ralph Nader

Since the 1960s Ralph Nader has been the foremost consumer advocate in the United States and one of the most uncompromising critics of American government and industry. Famous or infamous—depending upon one’s perspective—for his third-party campaigns for president, particularly in the wake of the controversial 2000 race, Nader has since left electoral politics behind but continues to use his renown to advocate for reform.

            The author of more than two dozen books, Nader recently published Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. City & State Editor Morgan Pehme spoke with Nader about the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and impeaching President Obama.

            The following is an edited transcript. 

 City & State: Given the partisan paralysis that we always hear about gripping the United States government, your argument in Unstoppable that there could be a left-right coalition seems like it would be counterintuitive for most Americans. What evidence do you see that such a coalition could actually come together and have success? 

Ralph Nader: It’s been coming together from time to time in recent decades. As a democratic society we’re looking for the opinions and positions of people wherever they come from and whatever labels they give themselves, so it really starts with public opinion polls and other indicia that show that back in the communities of our country there are concurrences on many major areas that I describe in my book—24 of them between left and right—and that constitutes an unstoppable majority if it emerges from verbal agreements into activity, into media, into legislatures and so forth. So there are stages. Some of the 24 are verbal agreements—they haven’t gone operational—but others are.

            You can see it. Minimum wage comes in [at] 70 to 80 percent … the breakup of the banks comes in at 90 percent, the big New York banks. The prosecution of Wall Street crooks is at the same level. Revision of the Patriot Act to preserve civil liberties and to drop government dragnet snooping, that comes in very high. Revision of the corporate-managed trade agreements to stem the loss of employment and sovereignty comes in very high—NAFTA and WTO. Eminent domain—the Supreme Court case on eminent domain in New London [Conn.]—remember the 5–4 decision allowing the city to condemn a whole housing neighborhood and give it to Pfizer corporation? (Four of the five were liberals, by the way.) And in the months following, that 22 legislatures—left-right coalition legislatures—passed laws saying, “Not in this state. … You can take private property for bridges and highways and so forth, but not … corporate property.”

            Then there’s a growing left-right coalition—you can see it in the collaboration of Ron Paul and Barney Frank in the House of Representatives between 2010 and 2012—on the bloated military budget. That’s a really emerging one now, against empire, wars oversees and the military budget.

            So when someone says, “Where’s the historic evidence?”—well, there’s a lot. The auto safety bill passed unanimously in 1966, the False Claims Act that saved tens of billions of dollars passed with Senator [Chuck] Grassley on one side and Congressman Howard Berman on the other collaborating intensely. Most recently it was the Whistleblower [Protection] Act, which was really opposed by the corporate lobbyists, but they lost. Because of a left-right coalition in Congress, it was overwhelmingly passed.

C&S: Do you see an appetite from the public to take on the corporate state? 80 percent of Americans may favor increasing the minimum wage. However, it’s one thing to hold that opinion; taking action to make it come to fruition is quite another.

RN: That’s where the stages come in. You’re right. There’s a widespread feeling of powerlessness ... The power structure is very strategic in dividing and ruling to make sure these coalitions do not emerge beyond just verbal concurrence. That they don’t emerge in terms of protests, marches, meetings with legislators, hearings and then going operational in terms of enactment. And … the media plays right along—the mass media—they focus on where the left and right disagree, like reproductive rights and gun control and so on, but they don’t give much attention to where they do agree. Of course, once the left-right alliance starts emerging more actively, the issues then become issues on the political election table. Once these issues get on the table, then the media will cover it, and then you’re off to the races. So it’s [those] stage[s]: verbal concurrence, then moving into a visible collaborative protest and demands, then getting media, and then moving to connect with the decision makers.

            What’s interesting about this is when there was a rumble from the people, like on the environmental issue, Nixon freaked out. He saw 20 million people participating in hundreds of Earth Day activities in 1970—and he freaked out! He signed the water and air pollution laws, set up the EPA, had a counselor in the White House. The corporatists are extremely, extremely fearful of a libertarian-conservative-liberal-progressive alliance, and you can see it again and again.

            When there were the arms control marches in New York City and Washington, D.C., under Reagan, Republicans looked at the crowd and they saw that there were quite a few well-dressed Republicans along with the libs, and that turned Reagan to start negotiating with the Soviets on arms control. So it’s all a matter of being put on the table and getting more visible.

            And of course the opposition to all of this is another type of convergence between the corporate liberals and the corporate conservatives. You can see it again and again, the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans. They converged on NAFTA and WTO. They converged on deregulating Wall Street and repealing Glass-Steagall. They converged on a variety of issues that spell the corporate state—that’s what the corporate state really is. So the challenge from the left-right alliance, in my book, is against the corporate alliance in the two parties, and money and politics greases that kind of process into ever-tighter formations.

            Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of a corporate liberal. She’s a militarist abroad, never saw a weapons system or a war she didn’t like, and she’s very close to Wall Street and didn’t do anything about heading off [the financial crisis] or dealing with the reforms after the Wall Street crash. So that’s the general scene.

            In New York State, I think antifracking is becoming left-right. … Mass incarceration and juvenile justice reform has already passed in over a dozen states. That couldn’t have happened without left-right in every state. Donald Ross, who headed NYPIRG, is leading this. He goes into one legislature after another, and he says to me, “Ralph, we couldn’t even get to first base if it wasn’t for a left-right alliance on juvenile justice and dealing with the war on drugs,” and so forth.

C&S: In recent years we have seen the growth of two major populist movements—the Tea Party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left—and it seemed at times there were concurrences—or at least the opportunity for concurrence—between the two. But then swiftly we saw on the right and on the left those movements being co-opted by the mainstream of the Republican and the Democratic Parties. How do you prevent that phenomenon from occurring—because if this grassroots uprising is the greatest fear of the corporate structure, isn’t the second it starts to flower when it will be nipped in the bud? 

RN: If it has that kind of contour. The Tea Party got so much publicity that it was hijacked by the corporate Republicans in Congress, who put the Tea Party label on them, and by some groups here [in D.C.] like Dick Armey’s group, and so on. It sort of pulled the rug out from under [the Tea Party.] Most of the Tea Party are libertarian types, Ron Paul types, and so forth. Occupy wasn’t so much hijacked as it was—once they were evicted from their encampment, they had no organization process, so they lost the mass media—and they didn’t want to have leaders or programs! We tried to get them to adopt the minimum wage. They could have surrounded Congressional offices back home and had protests, and represented 30 million people who are making less today than 1968, adjusted for inflation. And they said, “It’s a great issue, but we’re not organized to pull it off.” Once they were evicted from their encampments around the county, they didn’t have any money. A lot of them went back to California and Texas from Manhattan because they couldn’t afford the housing. That was an important factor that was very little reported.

C&S: Does there have to be a standard-bearer of this left-right coalition in order for it to succeed—and if so, who are some people who you see at the moment who could be its leader? 

RN: Well, we’re going to have a conference on left-right at the Carnegie Institute [of Washington] on May 27, and the people who are being invited are people like Ron Paul, Grover Norquist, Robert Reich, people from Public Citizen, Institute for Policy Studies, people who are challenging the defense budget, POGO [Project on Government Oversight], Taxpayers for Common Sense, the civil libertarian Bob Barr, former congressman, and people from the ACLU.

            However, the thesis of this book is that the energy starts from back home, and it isn’t necessarily focused on elections; it’s focused on telling the incumbents, “You better take this course of action, because you have left-right against you.” And so, just to show you how it would work, when the drums were being beaten for intervening in Syria last year, Obama went to Congress—for once—and said, “Authorize me.” Suddenly, the left-right protest came in—emails, telephone calls, they were coming in 50– and 100–1 in every office, and it just blew the whole thing out of the water. [Laughs] So you see, there are times you don’t have to march. You just have to show them this is a left-right issue and [they’re] not going back home and having much support.

            … In the 60s, there wasn’t that big a turnover in the Congress, but the people in the Congress felt the rumble from the people back home. So you had someone like Senator Warren Magnuson from Washington State, who year after year as chair of the Commerce Committee would do the corporate bidding—he turned into the greatest champion of consumer legislation in American history in the U.S. Senate. [Laughs] His 1968 re-election slogan was “Keep the Big Boys Honest,” because there was so much going on in Seattle and Washington, protesting, demanding—the streets were alive by comparison to today. He heard the rumble from the people, like Nixon did, and so I’m focusing on changing the political calculations of the incumbents.

C&S: You have called on President Obama to be impeached over how he handled Libya. Obviously, that is a view that alienates a lot of Democrats. You also alienate a lot of Republicans. Do you feel like you might be the wrong person to try to bring about this left-right unity movement?

RN: [Laughs] Not if I start back home. At the community level, that doesn’t operate. … The right-wing think tanks, they have problems. They have their own priorities. They may like what I’m saying, but they have other priorities that are opposed by the left, and those are the priorities that the Koch Brothers and Richard Scaife and others fund. … [And], sure, there are some Democrats, who never forgive anybody who challenges the party from the left, and they never will, whether it’s Henry Wallace or Eugene Debs or me or whatever. … But that’s kind of a cliquish liberal intelligentsia syndrome. I’ve been all over the country; I don’t see that back home. Back home they’re much more empirical—they don’t use that word, of course—about what they want, where they work, where they play, raising families and so forth. And they’re much more tolerant of third-party challenges as well.

C&S: I see a lot of people who identify the problems that you’re talking about in their daily lives, but they feel so removed from the government that there’s no way they can influence policy, so they just keep their heads down and concentrate on their own families. Doesn’t this seem like the largest obstacle to what you’re trying to accomplish?

RN: Yeah, it is. But once they see left-right, they become very encouraged. They don’t feel so isolated, especially in gerrymandered districts. It gives them a new source of energy, a higher morale. You can see it when it happens. The problem is there needs to be more institutional support for it, back home and in Washington. The media needs to report it more often. They sort of like to report it when it becomes quite visible. They love that opening sentence: “Unlikely allies today… Odd bedfellows…” It’s an easy first sentence. It’s counterintuitive.