Still, Nader remains unique to the Democratic contenders for the
labor issues he is persistent about addressing – issues that seem to be
off-limits for the Democratic Party. For example, none of the other
candidates will talk about repealing anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley,
instituting a tax on Wall Street securities speculation and cracking
down on corporate welfare. These often marginalized issues should be
seen as critical to the interests of the labor movement and the fact
that only a candidate outside of the Republican-Democratic fold will
raise these issues should give some pause about the limits of the
Democrats’ labor rights credentials. There is something systemic about
the machinery of the two-party system that prevents candidates from
addressing these issues.

On Thursday night Matt Gonzalez opened the event by thanking Nader
for offering him the position as running mate in his campaign and spoke
about his political trajectory beginning with his time working as a
public defender in San Francisco and witnessing the ravages of the
three-strikes laws. Gonzalez outlined three major objectives of the
campaign which included election reform, fighting poverty, and ending
the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He discussed the crisis in U.S. democracy,
the fact that the U.S. has the highest income inequality than any other
industrialized Western nation, and the need for a single-payer
healthcare system that is being ignored by the other candidates.

Nader’s 2008 campaign is reiterating the same analysis about the
“fraudulent” two-party system that Nader has always articulated, but
which arguably remains as true today as it did during the last four
presidential elections in which Nader ran. The Democrats raise money
from the same corporate interests as the Republicans, Nader pointed out
at the event last Thursday. He also cautioned that the “Least-Worst” or
“Lesser-Evil” mentality of the two-party system allows the Democrats to
take much of their votes for granted. He focused a great deal on
corporate money hijacking elections and how this monetarization of the
electoral process signals the destruction of choice and the demise of
democracy.

Nader also discussed how movements in U.S. history have been
responsible for pushing for real social change, including the movements
against slavery, for women’s suffrage and for labor rights.  These
movements, he said, often worked outside of the mainstream political
parties and in many cases formed small parties of their own. This
forming of alternative parties was acceptable then and should be
acceptable now, he argued. But Nader said the political servility of
Democrat-Republican corporate hegemony has infected the liberal
intelligentsia of this country. He also decried what he called the
“last-minute populism” of candidates like Hillary Clinton.

Of course, the proverbial Achilles’ heel of candidates like Nader
and his ability to secure the support of the larger labor unions, for
example, has always been the notion of “spoiling” electoral contests –
the seemingly inadvertent consequence of splitting progressive voters
and “handing” victory over to the Republican candidate. Ironically, the
very fact that such a disincentive exists for alternative voices to be
heard in elections – alternatives that fall outside of the very narrow
area of the political spectrum encapsulated by the Republican and
Democratic Parties – points precisely to the systemic restrictiveness
against which Nader has been struggling and confirms Nader’s analysis
of a closed democracy in which third-party candidates are told not to
run. For the record, even Al Gore himself has resisted the popular
impulse of blaming Nader for his “defeat” in 2000. As Nader has pointed
out, candidates should be held responsible for their own losses and not
point the finger at a third-party candidate. At the Thursday event,
Nader challenged the Democrats to win the support of those who would
otherwise vote for him instead of disparaging his candidacy as a
“spoiler.”

Ultimately, the Nader-Gonzalez campaign is presented as being about
increasing the voice and choice of voters, addressing the outrage of
issues such as labor being taxed more than capital and non-human
corporate entities being accorded the rights of citizens. Nader
explained the need to end fast-track procedures that allowed for the
passage of trade agreements like NAFTA, the need to end legislation in
which trade trumps labor and environmental standards, and the need for
corporations to be subordinated to the rights of human beings. He
emphasized ending anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley, going after
companies like Wal-Mart for labor abuses, and promoting “community
self-reliance” in which food and products are locally grown and
produced.

Even if many labor unions and activists refuse
to vote for Nader for fear of taking votes away from the Democrats, the
labor movement undeniably owes a degree of gratitude to Nader for his
relentless election-time advocacy of issues central to the struggle for
worker’s rights. If nothing else, Nader’s service to the movement has
been in forcing these neglected concerns into presidential debates,
challenging Democratic candidates to address labor rights issues that
would otherwise be left untouched.

This is a non-partisan blog that does not take a stance for or against any political candidates.