On 3/26/16 9:32 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> Ralph Nader on the futility of running as a third party candidate in the corrupted US political system dominated by the two corporate-funded major parties: “I was wrong and Bernie Sanders is right”.
In fact, the sentence Marv puts in Sanders' mouth, above, does not appear in the piece linked to.
Here are a few things that Nader does write:
"Given another chance, I still wouldn’t run as a Democrat; I continue to disagree with the party’s platform and direction. Sanders is different, though: However he’s appeared on Vermont ballots in the past, he’s really a progressive Democrat. He has caucused with the party in Congress for decades, even if its corporatist core has abandoned his New Deal priorities."
Nader doesn't mention that New Deal priorities were abandoned by the party sometime in the late 1940s, and although the upheavals of the 60s evoked a few grudging concessions, the party immediately moved to repudiate these aberrations as soon as the dust settled. Or even somewhat before. But hey, it's just an Op-Ed.
More Nader:
"I believe that should Clinton overcome Sanders and claim the Democratic nomination, the party will continue to be the champion of war and Wall Street, little changed by the primary competition."
This leaves open the question of what would happen if Sanders, improbably, should win the nomination. The closest parallel would seem to be the McGovern moment in 1972, when the party left its mildly liberal candidate to twist in the wind, and subsequently changed the rules to make sure such a moment would never happen again.
Nader's piece is actually quite interesting. We all knew, of course, how rigged the game is, but he brushes in some detail I for one had not known about. It's a thoughtful, factual, and therefore of course very bleak assessment.