Ralph Nader, former presidential candidate and author of Told You So, says that the progressive movement has become marginalized within the Democratic Party and criticized President Obama for not doing more to stand up for labor issues.
Specifically, Nader said that he believes that liberals have lost their bargaining power because they do not challenge establishment Democrats or show a “movement sensibility,” in a web-exclusive interview with The Daily Rundown’s Chuck Todd.
“The problem with progressives in the Democratic Party is—they’re hanging on. There is Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders—but they’re fairly marginalized. They’re not in the center because they don’t threaten to break. The right wing does threaten to break sometimes,” Nader explained.
Nader said that progressive liberals should put forward challenge to Hillary Clinton from the left in 2016, in the event that she runs.
“Hillary Clinton, who started out as a progressive out of Yale Law School and Wellesley, she’s become almost the poster child for the military-industrial complex. She hugs Kissinger. She hobnobs with Bob Rubin and the Wall Street crowd,” Nader stressed.
However, the five time presidential candidate is not confident that any of the prominent liberals will actually step forward.
“They are very skittish about challenging the dominant players in their party,” Nader said.
But Nader was also highly critical of the head of the Democratic party—the President of the United States.
“He [Obama] doesn’t like to associate with organized labor,” Nader said. “He walked across Lafayette Park over a year ago to pay homage to the Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t go around the corner to meet with representatives of 13 million workers. Isn’t that strange for a Democratic president?” Nader said. The political activist was particularly dismissive of what he said was Obama’s weak record on the minimum wage. “He put it in [his State of the Union address] in 2008. He wanted $9.50 per hour by 2011, never mentioned it after that,” Nader said. “He hasn’t done much.” “You have 30 million workers that are making less than 1968 workers, inflation adjusted, even though their productivity, according to our economists, has doubled,” Nader argued. Watch Nader’s full web-exclusive interview above.
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