Ralph Nader bei American Morning

"Address the issues, Barack"

Ralph Nader bei American Morning, CNN

Aired February 25, 2008 - 08:00 ET

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR

ROBERTS: .... And Ralph Nader is in the race for president again. What's his message for American voters and the major political parties? We'll ask him next on AMERICAN MORNING.

...

ROBERTS: It was news that many Democrats feared and didn't want to hear. Ralph Nader is running for president again. The political activist yesterday announced his decision to run for the White House. Many Democrats still blame Nader saying he took votes away from Al Gore in Florida in the 2000 election thus giving the election to George W. Bush. Why is he running again? Let's ask him. Ralph Nader joins me from our Washington Bureau.

Mr. Nader, good to see you. In 2000, that famous election. You got almost three million votes, you run again in 2004. You got about a half a million votes that compared with Bush and Kerry who got some 60 million votes. Do you have any realistic chance of becoming president this year?

RALPH NADER (I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The system obviously has been rigged. It even prevents candidates who come in first in the popular vote, like Gore did in 2000 from becoming president. That's what the Electoral College does, in all of these ballot access restrictions.

I'm running for a simple reason. Washington has closed its doors on citizen groups. Labor, citizen, consumer, reform groups, environmental groups. It's corporate occupied territory. And we've got to heed Thomas Jefferson who said when we lose our government. We've got to go into the electorate arena. Use the word revolution. I think we need a Jeffersonian revolution.

All these people around the country wonder, why isn't that government doing anything about high gas prices? Why isn't the government doing anything about high prices of medicine? Why isn't the government spending taxpayer dollars wisely instead of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on corporate subsidies and a bloated military defense budget?

All of which have been documented by the main stream press including CNN. So we have to give the system more competition, more voices, more choices, more freedom, more diversity.

ROBERTS: Now, all of the front-running candidates, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have all pledged to end the influence of special interest there in Washington. You don't believe that they will?

NADER: Of course not. I mean, first of all, if they wanted to do that, they'd put front and center public funding of public campaigns. They put front and center cracking down on corporate crime fraud and abuse. They would put front and center empowering the American people in direct democracy format so they can move in when they're so-called representatives, cave in to the interests of big business.

ROBERTS: You know, a lot of people talk, Mr. Nader, about the effect that you'll have in an election. Mike Huckabee believes that you're going to draw votes away from Democrats. That none of your votes will come from Republicans. And Hillary Clinton had something to say about that idea yesterday. Let's listen to how she responded to you getting in the race.

She said, "I remember when he ran before it didn't turn out very well for anyone, especially our country." So, would a Ralph Nader candidacy hurt the country? You know, you talked about how environmental groups have been shut out of Washington. Hillary Clinton says that you being in the race in the year 2000 prevented the person who would have been the greenest president in our lifetime from taking the reins at the White House?

NADER: That's a misstatement of the facts. I mean, Gore won. He won in Florida. He believes it, I believe it. It was stolen from him. They should concentrate on the thieves who steal elections in Florida and Ohio in 2004. They should try to get rid of the Electoral College which makes some mockery in front of the world, where someone who can come in second like George W. Bush in the popular vote, and ends up being president, selected by the Supreme Court. Why are they scapegoating the greens?

The Democrats ought to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, why they have not been able to landslide the worst Republican Party in the White House and Congress over the last 20 years. So, the important thing here is when we look back at American history, John, do we call the anti-slavery little party a spoiler? Do we call the women's suffrage for woman's right to vote a spoiler? They never won any national election, but they put the social justice issues on the front burner. That's what so important.

As John Edwards once said, little is going to change if we replace a corporate Republican with a corporate Democrat . And Hillary Clinton has been named by "Fortune Magazine" as the Democrat Most Loved by Big Business. An article by Nina Easton, in Fortune Magazine last June. That ought to speak volumes.

Barack Obama also had something to say about your candidacy. He said that he had tremendous respect for the work that you had done but he also added this, listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you're not substantive. He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: What do you say Mr. Nader to this idea that your candidacy is motivated by humorous?

NADER: As if Barack Obama does not have a high opinion of his own work. That's name-calling. Address the issues, Barack. Address why you're not for single-payer health insurance supported by a majority of American people in the forthcoming poll and majority of physicians.

Explain why you don't challenge what you know as to be tens of billions of dollars of waste fraud and abuse in the monetary budget. Explain why you don't really get concrete about how you would renegotiate NAFTA and WTO, which is exporting jobs and industry to places like the communist dictatorship in China.

And above all, explain why you don't come down hard on the economic crimes against minorities in city ghettos, who pay their loans in predatory lending, rent-to-own rackets, landlord abuses, lead contamination, asbestos. He's an unseemly silence by you, Barack, a community organizer in poor areas in Chicago many years ago, on this issue.

ROBERTS: Well, we will see if answers to those questions are forthcoming. Ralph Nader, again, presidential candidate as of yesterday, joining us this morning from Washington.

Mr. Nader, thanks very much.

NADER: And go to nader.org for more elaboration.

ROBERTS: All right. Thanks very much. Good to see you.

NADER: Thank you, John.

Mit vielem Dank an CNN !

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