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Ralph Nader would like to stop having to explain why the spoiler coverage is stupid (www.motherjones.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

An important point:
"The higher level is: What do we do with these big corporations? One is we’ve got to subordinate them constitutionally. So corporations should never have equal rights with real people. Now they’re connecting with AI. You want a deadly cocktail? Connect artificial persons called corporations with AI.
Founders intent was for corporations to be temporary
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/

We have a system designed for 1% of the present population
We have a system designed for information moving at the speed of horse
Founders intent was a representative for 30,000 citizens, presently a representative for 700,000 citizens
We have a system that is completely over whelmed by the number & complexity of decisions to be made
We need more channels for informed feedback
Having a meaningful political opinion has

I lived in California in 2000 & voted for Ralph, knowing Gore had Cali in the bag

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The idea behind third parties in the 19th century was you push one of the two parties—or maybe both parties—and they eventually adopt what you’re pushing. And I learned that wasn’t possible. The Democrats would respond not by moving in the direction of working for the people. They responded by scapegoating their losses onto the Green Party.

They’re great scapegoaters—they never look at themselves in the mirror.

I want to ask about 2024. It seems that the rhetoric of the “lesser of two evils” is especially heightened—

Wait a minute. It’s the wrong question. It’s the wrong question. The first question is: Why isn’t the Democratic Party and Biden 20 points ahead of a chronic liar, thief, crook, narcissist, smearer, slanderer, ignorant, stupid Trump and his followers? That’s the question. You don’t take the dereliction of the party knuckling under their corporate political media people and start there. You start with: Why aren’t they landsliding him?

You got to start digging deep, Jacob—you got to dig deep into the malaise, the surrender, the low expectation level, the narcissism, the smugness of our side. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We have the most powerful arguments in American history, against the worst tyrants and corporate indentured servants in American history.

Damn, this is what establishment politics robs us of; intelligent, coherent, pro-labor candidates.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I went on a whim to hear him speak back in 2008 and was so impressed ended up voting for him.

Granted, this was in Vermont, so it was already 100% clear that Obama was going to win the state.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I respect enormously where he's coming from, but he refuses to acknowledge the very simple fact that spoilers do occur, and in close-run races, they can change the outcome for the worse. He says the Democrats didn't understand the winner-takes-all Electoral College in 2000, while he himself dismisses his own part in that. Yes, ideally, Democrats would have played a better game and won by a larger margin and the spoiler wouldn't have mattered. But they didn't, and I think every factor that lead to Gore's loss should be looked at and criticised, including Nader's run.

The first and most important change that could be made in America is moving to a real voting system. First Past the Post is a sham. It isn't democracy. Whether the move is to IRV or MMP or STV or whatever almost doesn't matter. Just move to something real. Eliminate the spoiler effect, and then you can begin to see real meaningful policy change.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

He's not refusing to acknowledge spoilers exist, he's saying that the whole premise is that they are voters who would be voting for the larger party if their policy positions were adopted or engaged with by the party they're "spoiling", and yet when the e.g. Democratic Party just refuses to engage with any policy changes and thusly doesn't gain those voters who were available to them, they turn around and blame the voters, when it was literally a choice they made to decline engaging with their positions. He is pointing out that it is the party choosing to stick with their corporate-backed positions over gaining voters (i.e. over winning).

They either don't understand, or actively refuse to engage with, coalition-building.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

In much of what he said, he’s not wrong.

I feel that until the republic is actively dying (successful coup, turning military against own citizens, etc), Americans will sit idly by and armchair-criticize what they perceive as “the other side.”

And while the media is certainly at fault for so very much, along with money in politics (Citizens United decision, lobbying, etc), fundamentally the blame really rests on us American citizens for becoming, on the whole, so uneducated, so apathetic, and so accepting of the us vs. them mentality that it will require some kind of revolution to shake things up.

My only hope is that I’m either dead before that happens, or that it’s not the Trump fascists (or any fascists) who succeed in the revolution they have already attempted once.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that's how people work. An individual can decide to think critically, act selflessly, but when you're talking about millions of people environment means so much more. A mass of people don't just do anything. They are the result of their education, media, and religion. When all these things are shaped by people with all the money it's no wonder that people are bigoted, short sighted, and disillusioned with politics. We live in an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine.

As long as people are sufficiently comfortable, things will continue as they are. Enough people need to find their material reality shitty enough that they're no longer willing to eat the shit we've been fed all this time. Things haven't been this concentrated since before the great depression. If we see a similar economic collapse. This time a collapse in the ad/tech market or obscene capital financialization, and we'll finally see a similar backlash against capital. We just need to make sure we finish the job and the owners can't slowly claw back political power again.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I kinda feel like we said the same thing, just differently worded, except that it is my opinion that people are capable of advancing their own education once they reach the age of reason, assuming they have no disability that would interfere. People can critically think, and learn how to. They choose not to at some point. They choose the easier path of parroting what they hear on television and let others do the thinking for them.

This is why I feel me and my fellow American citizens are very much to blame for allowing this nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I was a little kid in 2000; all I knew about him was that he was a presidential candidate who wasn't gonna win. This interview opened my eyes up to who he actually is, what he did for America, and just how similar my views on politics in America are to his. I'm glad I don't see him as just a punchline anymore.

Also, he was kinda daddy when he was younger.