Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 16

THE Monthly
INTERVIEW

Tim Noah: This is a very polarized moment in American politics. Can
we expect politicians to bargain in good faith?
Ralph Nader: Polarization is a controlling process. It is instinctual in ruling groups in any culture. You try to divide and rule. When you get down
to where people live, work, and raise their families, if a strong appeal is
made that's empirically based-like people getting killed in auto crashes
before seat belts-the ideological labels that people put on themselves
tend to shrink away.
TN: Do you buy into the notion that Republicans obstruct more than
Democrats?
RN: I don't have the answer to the breed of Republicanism that is on
Capitol Hill. I don't know where these guys come from, other than totally
gerrymandered districts.
TN: Democrats are very insulated as well, and you aren't seeing the
same tendency toward extremism there.
RN: Not yet. The Republicans are proactive and the Democrats are reactive. And that reverberates [with] the voters. And that's why there are
far more "least-worst" voters on the progressive-liberal side.
TN: What do you mean by "least-worst"?
RN: "Least-worst" means even if they hate the corporate Democrats,
they will vote for them because the Republicans are worse. [But] the Democrats are more corporate than I've ever seen on Capitol Hill, by and large.
TN: I would guess that a great deal of the Tea Party agenda scares corporate America to death, and pushes it into the arms of Democrats. For
example, it doesn't want to see the Export-Import Bank shut down.
RN: Yeah, that started before the Tea Party. I mean Clinton, the Clintons
were perfect examples of corporate Democrats. He wrote the blueprint.
TN: Let's talk about "too big to fail." There's a very interesting ideological convergence there, because conservatives don't want to have to bail
out the banks again. Do you see any hope of limiting the size of banks?
RN: Yeah. I think both sides see that once the economy is on the cliff
due to Wall Street, they can't say no [to a bailout]. And that's why I think
you're up to almost 90 percent in support of breaking up the big banks.
16

September/October 2014

TN: So how do you get over that
hump in Congress? It seems part of
what's happened is that the Democrats have chased Wall Street
into the arms of Republicans. And
the Republican leadership is taking a doctrinaire pro-Wall Street
position that's at odds with conservative thinking.
RN: That's right. Congress is the last to get the message of this book.
And, you know, Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any
presidential candidate, including McCain. I think what we are seeing
here is, increasingly, both parties are blocking massive public opinion
that hasn't gone operational yet, except here and there. For example,
it's about to go operational, if the Trans-Pacific [Partnership] agreement
is sent to the House, they have a left-right majority to block fast track. It
went operational on the [2012] Whistleblower Protection [Enhancement]
Act, against the corporate lobbies that hated it. It's going to be victorious
on [raising the] minimum wage.
TN: You think so?
RN: You already have six companies that say they will go for it or they
won't oppose it. McDonald's, Walmart, and Target are already on board.
The Gap. You don't need many more for the tipping point.
TN: Why do you think these corporations are coming around?
RN: We met with Walmart twice. And we said, "Do you know what $30
billion will do to our economy? Where do you think a lot of these lowwage workers who just got a restoration will spend their money? They're
going to spend it at Walmart." Walmart's big problem is stagnant sales.
And they put out a comment a few weeks ago saying it's because people
don't have enough money!
The other thing is turnover. They have huge turnover, which is costly, even though they have part-time work. [As a result,] they don't have
[high productivity,] as Costco [does]. Costco starts at $11.50 plus benefits. It is finally getting through to them. But the subtext of this is that
it's easier than we think to change this country on issue after issue
after issue.
TN: We know about the fast-food workers who are getting underpaid, but there's also the plight of the franchise owners. The contract
terms that they have to sign on to are unbelievable. The failure rate
of franchisees is actually higher than the failure rate for other small
businesses.
RN: Well, back in the '50s, the auto dealers were in that situation. And
they mobilized, and they got the Dealers Day in Court Act. So they have
a stronger statutory basis. But it's restricted to auto dealer contracts. The
others have never been able to organize.

Washington Post/Getty Images

In his new book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to
Dismantle the Corporate State, the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader argues that on many issues, from undeclared
wars to unprosecuted Wall Street crimes, liberal and conservative citizens
increasingly agree with each other, and that, by working together, they can
take back Washington. After Washington Monthly contributing editor
Timothy Noah wrote a respectful, if skeptical, review of Nader's book for the
Washington Post, we asked him to sit down with Nader for a wide-ranging
interview. Here's an edited version of that conversation.

Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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