I know there aren't many easier targets in the dKos world than Ralph Nader, but reading
this Boston Globe piece and
this Salon.com article from yesterday reminded me both of just how important Ralph's anti-corporate power mission really is--and of how far he has strayed from it in his monomaniacal drive to stop the insufficiently "pure" Democrats.
The Salon story had to do with Tom DeLay, the most heinous offender of campaign finance laws and enabler of corporate government currently on the national scene. Has Nader spoken about DeLay even once in his quixotic run? The guy embodies everything Ralph claims to despise in our national politics, and he could use his gadfly status to further bring the heat on him.
And here's the key section from the excellent
Globe piece:
...a Republican leadership has sidelined legislation unwanted by the Bush administration, even when a majority of the House seemed ready to approve it, according to lawmakers, lobbyists, and an analysis of House activities. With one party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, and having little fear of retaliation by the opposing party, the House leadership is changing the way laws are made in America, favoring secrecy and speed over open debate and negotiation. Longstanding rules and practices are ignored. Committees more often meet in secret. Members are less able to make changes to legislation on the House floor. Bills come up for votes so quickly that elected officials frequently don't know what's in them. And there is less time to discuss proposed laws before they come up for a vote.
"There is no legislative process anymore," said Fred Wertheimer, the legendary open-government activist who has been monitoring Congress since 1963. "Bills are decided in advance of going to the floor."
Republicans counter that Democrats, too, used their power to get their way when they were in the majority, and Democrats acknowledge that they sometimes used procedures to their advantage. It was the Democrats, for example, who changed the makeup of the Rules Committee to give disproportionate clout to the majority party.
But longtime Congress-watchers say they have never seen the legislative process so closed to input from minority-party members, the public, and lobbyists whose agenda is unsympathetic to GOP leadership goals.
The whole piece is pretty damning, and includes specifics about how Accenture and other firms have seen their lobbying investments pay off many times over. Why isn't Ralph out there railing against the Republican Congress--which is far more antithetical to his professed agenda and reason for running than John Kerry or John Edwards?
I don't want this to seem gratuitous. I voted for Nader in 2000 (in NY) because I believed in the importance of a check on corporate power. I still do; I just don't see how Nader advances that agenda anymore, especially by spending all his time in court trying to get on state ballots.
Ralph could somewhat redeem himself by re-focusing on these crucial issues.
Failing that, the Democrats could further erode his small but still potentially decisive base by making these points themselves.