“This Is a Collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue to look at Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris and the Republicans taking control of the Senate — we don’t know yet about the House — we’re joined by Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former, well, four-time presidential candidate, author of many books, including, most recently, Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People. Ralph Nader is the founder of the monthly newspaper the Capitol Hill Citizen.

Ralph, thanks so much for joining us. Your response to Donald Trump’s victory? It looks like he not only won the Electoral College but will win the popular vote this time, as he didn’t in the two past elections.

RALPH NADER: Well, Amy and Juan, there’s going to be a lot to digest here. This is a collapse of the Democratic Party. They didn’t get their vote out that they wanted. They were several million votes below what they expected, and, of course, that made the difference in an Electoral College system in the swing states.

But the problem is much more serious than that. Basically, we now are a country under a dictatorial corporate state. Trump is basically a magnet and a trap for the Democrats. They spent tens of millions of dollars on ads going after Trump, instead of going after the four years that Trump deep-sixed so many critical issues and positions in his term as president. So, the problem is, it’s so many variables here to deal with.

It all started, Amy, when the Democrats abandoned half the country to the red states. That’s devastating. Then they started getting corporate cash in 1979, dialing for the same commercial values. That blurred their difference from the New Deal-type Democrats to the corporate Democrats. Then they contracted out the election to these corporate-conflicted profiteering consulting firms, which the mass media never seemed to want to investigate in this campaign. And then they abandoned public media. Basically, they abandoned radio to the Rush Limbaughs and created the Reagan Democrats. And then they never learn from their mistakes. They didn’t learn from the mistakes of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Then, they never fire anybody after they lose, in one state after another, to horrendous, the worst Republican Party in history.

And so, what is the message that they gave to the American people? The message is Trump is terrible, and you can’t believe how bad the Republican Party is. It’s too general a message, too simple. A vast majority of people think corporations have too much control over their lives. They didn’t fill the blanks, denial of healthcare benefits. And they didn’t fill the blanks on a living wage. They didn’t fill the blanks on cracking down on corporate crooks. They didn’t fill the blanks on reversing a tax system which undertaxes the very wealthy and the big corporations. They didn’t reverse themselves really on trade. They didn’t know how to rebut Trump on immigration. He called the people coming in rapists, criminals, drug traffickers, etc. Instead of saying, “Well, they’re fleeing oppressive countries that are backed by the U.S., dictators and oligarchs in Central and South America,” they didn’t say that millions of Americans trust immigrants to harvest their food, to care for their children, to care for elderly, to provide critical services that nobody wants to work in in the U.S.

So, you know, there’s such a bill of particulars against this Democratic Party. And what’s happened, of course, is that millions of people are basically saying, “We’re sick of throwaway lines. We’re sick of not having the government return the benefits of massive taxation to us. We’re sick of — all we hear about is empire abroad. All we hear about is more military budgets by the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress, giving the generals more than they ask for, eating the public budgets that should be providing public services and public infrastructure in communities all over the country, creating key jobs.”

Now, we tried to straighten out these Democrats. Twenty-four civic leaders in 2022, going into the present time, tried to tell them how to communicate, what to communicate with all the people. And they didn’t listen. The Democratic Party severed any kind of response — that’s Nancy Pelosi, that’s Chuck Schumer, you name them — with the civic community in Washington, D.C., the ones that —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, let me ask you. For the progressive movement now, as it faces the return of Donald Trump, what do you think are the next steps in terms of resistance or reorganization that have to occur?

RALPH NADER: Well, it’s got to be focused on Congress. The House is not yet resolved, but only Congress can stop the Trumpsters. It isn’t just Trump. Trump is a figurehead. Trump is a bullhorn. It’s the Trumpsters. It’s the Heritage Foundation. It’s 2025. It’s the takeover of departments that are dedicated to standing up for the people, the environmental protection bureau, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the auto safety bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department. These are all going to be turned into virulent, vengeful or inactive governments. They want to destroy the civil service, bring it back to the spoils system. We’re in for huge turmoil. One can say that the election yesterday really elected President Vance. Trump is not going to last. He’s going to disintegrate. And Vance is in a position to become the next president.

So, what has to be done, Juan, is massive focus on Congress, which is the main constitutionally authorized lever to hold the executive branch accountable, build for 2026. The Democrats will have far fewer people up for the Senate than the Republicans, unlike this year.

And they’ve got to stop blasting away at people who want to challenge the Democratic Party. The party says to everybody on their side, “You know how bad the Republicans are? You got nowhere to go.” They spent a lot of money attacking the Green Party, the tiny Green Party, instead of listening to William Barber, Reverend William Barber, who said, “Look, there’s 80 million people who aren’t going to vote. A lot of them are low-wage workers. If you get 15% of low-wage workers who aren’t voting to go to the polls, the Democrats would have won.” They didn’t listen to him. They didn’t listen to all the citizen groups who know how to talk to people, not just liberal patients or liberal workers, but conservative workers, conservative patients. Remember, a vast majority of this country wants to tax the undertaxed wealthy and the corporations. They want to break up the big banks. And above all, in poll after poll, they say that corporations have too much control over their lives. Sherrod Brown pulled in his horns and lost. Bernie Sanders campaigned on corporate power, and he won in a landslide in Vermont. And Harris refused to campaign with Bernie Sanders, but she campaigned in several states with Liz Cheney of the criminal Cheney family and the invasion of Iraq that killed over a million Iraqis.

So the blunders were endless. And it was basically turning her back on the progressive and the genuine populist constituency in this country. And Bernie, of course, supported Harris, but his positions were rejected constantly. He said, “Get the living wage up. Get universal healthcare up. Crack down on corporate crooks. Increase Social Security benefits that have been frozen for over 50 years. And get the taxation on the wealthy.” She ignored all that. Just throwaway lines.