Nader Slugs It Out with the Party Duopoly

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted May 31, 2000.

As most of us know by now, the Republicrat two-party duopoly is squeezing the life out of our democratic system. The majority no longer has a political home, and the choices are so dismal that there are more people in America today who bowl than vote in presidential elections.

Both national parties now exist as wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporate America, selling two brands of the same corporate agenda: Bud Light-Miller Lite/George Bush-Al Gore, take your choice. Mighty small beer.

But wait, this is America! We don't have to take what the Powers That Be give to us. We can create a new politics, just as others before us have had to do: the revolutionaries of 1776, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the populists, the A.F.L, the Wobblies, the C.I.O., the civil rights movement, the antiwar protesters ... and, today, the democracy agitators who are in rebellion against global corporate rule.

In every case, ordinary citizens have had to do the extraordinary, going right into the face of entrenched political and economic power, clobbering the system, getting clobbered in return, yet persevering, pushing ... and eventually widening the possibilities of democratic participation. And, in every case, these democratizing movements have had to create their own political channels.

Now comes Ralph Nader -- he's serious, he's ready, he's running. Forging a blue-green, labor-environmental alliance and articulating (as only he can do) a powerful, unifying message of citizen democracy over global corporate plutocracy, he's offering himself and his Green Party presidential candidacy as an organizing tool for building a new political channel around the corporate-controlled two-party duopoly that's blocking America's majority from democratic participation in power.

Unlike 1992, when he merely allowed his name to be on the ballot, and 1996 when he chose not to fund-raise or campaign aggressively, Nader is going all out in 2000: He's working on the campaign full time; he's traversing America, going to all 50 states, launching petition drives that will put him on the ballot in at least 40 states; he's raising at least $5 million to finance his grassroots organization; he has assembled a top-notch staff (headed by longtime citizen activist Theresa Amato of Chicago) that includes experienced people to handle everything from fund-raising and field organizing to press and the website (www.votenader.com); and he has enlisted the respected campaign veteran Steve Cobble to serve as political strategist. With Native-American activist Winona LaDuke as his running mate, Ralph not only is committed to providing a real choice in November and building a Green Party infrastructure, but he also seems to be enjoying it!

I think Nader is the right person, running for the right reasons, at the right time.

The Right Person

Americans are yearning for a simple quality that's rare in politics these days: Integrity. This was the core appeal of Sen. John McCain, whose candidacy even attracted liberals willing to overlook his right-wing record because he "had integrity." Susan DeMarco and I hear this yearning daily in our conversations with callers on our "Chat & Chew" radio talk show (www.jimhightower.com, M-F, noon-2 EST) where a common refrain is the desire for candidates who are not bought by anyone, who stand squarely on basic principles of fairness and justice for all, and who are unafraid to fight the corporate and governmental elites running roughshod over us.

Who today really fits this standard? Ralph Nader. He needs no gaggle of spin meisters, no policy puffers to concoct a record of integrity for him as Gore and Bush must have -- he is integrity. In a time when the phrase "shallow politics" has become a redundancy, Nader's reform agenda of civic democracy is not a political position -- it's his life!

For 35 years, he has sustained one of the most effective citizen's movements in our history. For example, thanks to his initiatives, cars have seat belts, water is cleaner, children's pajamas don't burst into flame, there's no smoking on airlines, there are right-to-know laws about polluting factories, and our air is less toxic -- the guy has saved more lives than Mother Teresa. Among other fights, he's been on the front lines against abusive HMOs, the autocratic Federal Reserve, NAFTA and the WTO, corporate crime, union busters, Pentagon follies, and the corruption of our government by big money.

When George W. Bush was wasting his twenties and thirties as a party animal, when Al Gore Jr. was carefully plotting his climb up the ladder of corporate-financed politics, when Pat Buchanan was a Nixon hatchet man, Ralph Nader was with the folks, battling for both political and economic democracy.

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