{"id":2057,"date":"2004-07-05T10:25:34","date_gmt":"2004-07-05T15:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2057.html"},"modified":"2004-07-05T10:25:34","modified_gmt":"2004-07-05T15:25:34","slug":"that-rationale-sure-sounds-familiar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/that-rationale-sure-sounds-familiar\/","title":{"rendered":"That rationale sure sounds familiar"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s his name was on Meet the Press<\/a> yesterday and was asked to explain why he is running for president. I found the answer pretty interesting.<\/p>\n

Andrea Mitchell: “You announced your candidacy back in February right here on this program with Tim [Russert]. A lot of Democrats have been very negative in their response. What is the rationale for your candidacy?”<\/p>\n

Ralph Nader: “Politics is broken in this country. I think most people believe that. It’s for sale. The corporations and their executives fund so much of politics. They put a ‘For sale’ sign on many offices in Congress and government departments. And as a result, the necessities of the people are not being met. We have 47 million workers that work full time. The cleaners, the people who harvest our food who don’t make a living wage, they work at Wal-Mart wages. We have 45 million, I think now, who don’t have health insurance. The environment is still being devastated. They can’t even count the votes on Election Day accurately. And giant corporations just have turned Washington into corporate-occupied territory.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of this sounded pretty familiar.
\n
\nLet’s see, Nader’s concerned about wages for low-income families. Coincidentally, John Kerry supports a strong increase in the minimum wage<\/a> and indexing it to inflation. <\/p>\n

Nader is worried about the millions of Americans without health insurance. Coincidentally, John Kerry has unveiled a plan<\/a> for dramatically expanding access to quality, affordable health care, and has made it a centerpiece of his campaign.<\/p>\n

Nader believes the environment is being “devastated.” John Kerry has championed environmental issues throughout his career and has laid out a comprehensive campaign plan<\/a> emphasizing conservation, environmental justice, smart growth, and livable communities.<\/p>\n

Nader is disturbed by the inability to fully count American votes. John Kerry has championed wide-ranging election reform<\/a> and was a strong supporter of the election reform law passed in 2003.<\/p>\n

Nader is obviously concerned about the role of money in the political process. John Kerry has backed campaign finance reform for years<\/a> (including provisions that go well beyond McCain-Feingold), has not taken a dime of PAC money during his four Senate elections or during his presidential race, and has offered a proposal that would ban anyone leaving government office from becoming a lobbyist for five years and would require that every meeting between a federal official and a lobbyist be a matter of public record.<\/p>\n

On Meet the Press, Nader emphasized the importance of giving voters choices. But if Nader’s own self-described rationale for running is already part and parcel of Kerry’s agenda, why do we need Nader? Oh wait, we don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s his name was on Meet the Press yesterday and was asked to explain why he is running for president. I found the answer pretty interesting. Andrea Mitchell: “You announced your candidacy back in February right here on this program with Tim [Russert]. A lot of Democrats have been very negative in their response. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}