Death of the Liberal Class - Chris Hedges [101]
“The press in the 1980s would say, ‘Why should we cover you?’” Nader continued:“Who is your base in Congress?” I used to be known as someone who could trigger a Congressional hearing pretty fast in the House and Senate. They started looking towards the neoliberals and neo-cons and the deregulation mania. We put out two reports on the benefits of regulation, and they, too, disappeared. They did not get covered at all. This was about the same time that Tony Coelho taught the Democrats, starting in 1979 when he was head of the House Campaign Finance Committee, to start raising big-time money from corporate interests. And they did. It had a magical influence. It is the best example I have of the impact of money. The more money they raised, the less interested they were in any of these popular issues. They made more money when they screwed up the tax system. There were a few little gains here and there. We got the Freedom of Information [Act] through in 1974. And even in the 1980s we would get some things done, [the General Services Administration] buying airbag-equipped cars, the drive for standardized air bags. We would defeat some things here and there, block a tax loophole and defeat a deregulatory move. We were successful in staunching some of the deregulatory efforts.
Nader, locked out of the legislative process, decided to send a message to the Democrats, who were now beholden to corporate donors. He went to New Hampshire and Massachusetts during the 1992 primaries and ran as “None of the above.” In 1996 he allowed the Green Party to put his name on the ballot before running hard in 2000 in an effort that spooked the Democratic Party. The Democrats, fearful of his grassroots campaign, blamed him for the election of George W. Bush, an attack that found fertile ground among those who had abandoned rational inquiry for the sound bites of television news.
Nader’s status as a pariah corresponded with an unchecked assault on the working class by corporations and their tacit allies in the liberal class. Long-term unemployment, millions of foreclosures, crippling personal debts and bankruptcies, the evaporation of savings and retirement accounts, and the crumbling of the country’s infrastructure are taking place as billions in taxpayer subsidies, obscene profits, bonuses, and compensation are doled out to corporate overlords. The drug and health-insurance companies, subsidized with billions in taxpayer funds, will soon legally force us to buy their defective products while remaining free to raise co-payments and premiums, especially if we get seriously ill. The oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power companies have made a mockery of Barack Obama’s promises to promote clean, renewable energy. We are rapidly becoming a third-world country, cannibalized by corporations, with two-thirds of the population facing severe financial difficulty and poverty.
“You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Nader said:The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a “least-worst” voter, you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the antiwar demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of the Nation and the Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and the movement of jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point, you do not have a moral compass.