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Vol. 72/No. 34      September 1, 2008

 
Nader runs on procapitalist
reform election platform
 
BY BEN JOYCE  
Ralph Nader is campaigning for U.S. president as an “anticorporate” alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. As in his previous presidential campaigns, his candidacy seeks to pressure the Democratic Party to take a more “progressive” direction. The economic nationalist policies he advocates, from protectionism to scapegoating immigrants, has also drawn support from some right-wing elements.

On August 2 Nader won the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party in California, which acts as a “left” pressure group on the Democrats. In other states he is seeking ballot status as an “independent.” Nader, who built his early career as a “consumer advocate,” ran for president in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket, garnering nearly 3 million votes in the latter. In 2004, he ran as an independent and won about 400,000 votes. In that race, not backed by the Greens, he won ballot status in several states with the endorsement of the Reform Party, a group founded by rightist Ross Perot.

This year Nader’s campaign is running a similar procapitalist campaign. While criticizing the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, he says that “I see Obama being better on some domestic issues than McCain,” and goes on to offer a reform program of “cracking down on corporate crime.” He advocates a smaller U.S. military budget and a “rapid, negotiated withdrawal from Iraq.” He has previously advocated a “modest” military intervention in Afghanistan.

Blaming immigrant workers for unemployment, in an interview posted on YouTube in March, Nader called for controlling “our borders.” A July 9 column by right-winger Jack Hunter in the Charleston City Paper praised Nader’s position and favorably quoted his statement, “I don’t like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next?”

Nader calls for a protectionist trade policy he claims will secure “U.S.” jobs and preserve the “economic well-being of the American worker.” As part of his anti-China campaign he chastises U.S. companies for “outsourcing American jobs to China.”

He calls for a national public health care system modeled on the one in Canada, whose brand of capitalism he praises as an alternative to the U.S. variety.

He has been endorsed by a few middle-class radical groups such as Socialist Alternative, which in March argued on its Web site that “a strong vote for Nader could bring real pressure to bear on an Obama or Clinton presidency to deliver concessions.”

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, though running its own presidential candidate, Gloria La Riva, praises Nader as an “alternative progressive candidate.”  
 
 
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