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- [00:00]
Sam Rosenthal
Host of Global Village.
- [00:02]
Ralph Nader
Join me for an exploration of Afro Cuban rhythms from next door and around.
- [00:06]
Steve Scrovan
The world, with other musical stops along the way.
- [00:09]
Ralph Nader
That's every Monday on Global Village from.
- [00:12]
Steve Scrovan
11Am to 1pm on KPFK Los Angeles, 90.7 FM. This is John Nichols of the Nation.
- [00:27]
Sam Rosenthal
Magazine, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [00:32]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [00:33]
Sam Rosenthal
Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
- [00:40]
Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello, David. How you doing today? Hello, Steve. And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [00:52]
Russell Mulkhyberg
Hello, Steve.
- [00:54]
Steve Scrovan
Good to have you. And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
- [00:58]
Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody.
- [01:00]
Steve Scrovan
First up on today's program, we'll be joined by Sam Rosenthal of Roots Action. Roots Action is an organization dedicated to galvanizing people who are committed to economic fairness, equal rights for all, civil liberties, environmental protection, and defunding endless wars. They've just released their report on the 2024 election, including an autopsy of how the Democrats lost the White House and what Democrats can learn from this preventable loss to turn the tide in 2026 and beyond. Root's Action says without a full and honest accounting of the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party's myriad failures, there can be little realistic hope of defeating Trumpist authoritarianism in the future. This is especially germane in light of the fact that the Democratic National Committee completed their own autopsy and refused to share it publicly, which Ken Martin, the new head of the dnc, had previously pledged to do. We can only speculate why, but it's my guess that these things usually involve not wanting to alienate large donors. After that, Ralph will answer some of your listener questions. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our indomitable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, how did the Democrats lose the White House in 2024? David? Sam Rosenthal is an organizer and researcher who serves as political director at Roots Action. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [02:30]
Sam Rosenthal
Sam Rosenthal, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [02:34]
Ralph Nader
Welcome, Sam, to the program. It's always good to see any kind of independent critique of the deteriorating Democratic Party that can't landslide the worst Republican party in history. The problems you point out in your report are well taken. We'll get to them. But the problem with the Democratic Party started years ago. In the early 70s. Kenneth Galbraith, who started, among others, Americans for Democratic Action, wrote an article for Harper's warning that the Democratic Party was getting too close to corporate interests. And that was completely opposite the purpose and mission of the party, he said. And then about 2000 AD, Robert Reich, who was labor secretary under Bill Clinton, wrote a column for the Washington Post that started out saying the Democratic Party is dead, dead, dead. Now, part of the problem is the Democratic Party in the late 1970s and early 80s, under the purview of their cash cow, corporate style congressman California, who ran their campaign, basically said, look, the Democrats can raise big money from corporate facts like the Republicans. Let's go. And that began another slide. We found it was difficult to get congressional hearings even when the Democrats were in charge after that, or responses from regulatory commission to our petitions. And then the worst blunder, as far as I'm concerned, is they wrote off half the country. I mean, imagine a party that is inherently national in scope since its inception, basically creating a red state, blue state, bipolar political situation where they abandoned their local Democrats in places like Texas and Georgia and all the way down to dog catcher. They shredded the Democratic Party and just conceded all these votes from the get go. There wasn't even a contested election situation in many of these red states, mountain states, for example, southern states. Then they lost the gerrymandering battle big time in 2020 that was chronicled in a book. They were caught napping and they lost even more seats in the House of Representatives, even though they had votes that could have carried them to more seats. But the gerrymandering nullified that kind of impact. So with this kind of background, your report basically has six parts to it and then a path forward. It starts out with voter disenchantment, and that deals with the quantitative reason for Kamala Harris defeat. 6.8 million voters, listeners who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home. That's the ball game right there, 6.8 million. And then second is Biden's betrayal. You have a section on abandoning the base, the blue collar base, losing the working class, bailing on Israel and Gaza, and losing young and progressive voters. But let's start with the people who stayed home. What can you tell us about that and why?
- [05:31]
Sam Rosenthal
Yeah, well, first, great to be here. And your synopsis of the way the Democratic Party has shed support over the last half century or so is spot on. You know, we think that starting with those 7 million, just under 7 million who stayed home is the most critical factor among the ones that we identify. And the places where the Democrats hemorrhage electoral support were not, by and large, in purple states, in swing states. They weren't in the sort of fabled suburbs that every political consultant likes to talk about. They were mostly in Democratic Party strongholds. We're talking about young voters, voters of color in major urban centers and college towns who looked at their choices last year, looked at the candidates and the way the Democratic Party had conducted business, and said, I don't really see anyone here who's representing my best interests. So it's not that these folks necessarily went and voted for Donald Trump, although some did voted third party, although some did. But by and large, people just didn't come out and vote. They were not inspired, they were not galvanized, and they didn't see how it would benefit their material interests to come out and support the Democratic Party as they had in 2020. So, as you say, that's the ball game, basically. It's incredibly hard to come back from nearly 7 million vote drop, presidential cycle to presidential cycle and everything else that we point to in this report I think is a bit secondary to that.
- [06:57]
Ralph Nader
Top line, let's zig and sag a bit. Do you think those voters, if the election was held today, would still stay home?
- [07:05]
Sam Rosenthal
No, I think that the Trump administration, the second Trump administration, has in some ways exceeded our most macabre fantasies about what this administration could be. It's really staffed by neo fascists, by people like Stephen Miller, who envision a white America and are open about their desire to purge people from this country, to purge non white people from this country. And so I think that many voters have come to understand that this is a uniquely pernicious administration in some ways even more so than Trump's first administration. So I don't think they would all, you know, if they had the benefit of foresight, I don't think they would all stay home. But it's a huge number of voters to convince to turn out. Even if you had three and a half million more voters come out, you would still only be halfway to retaking the White House. So, you know, it's an incredibly big hole to be in.
- [07:53]
Ralph Nader
We're talking with Dan Rosenthal, who's the editor of the new report, Autopsy How Democrats Lost the White House, A Roots Action report on the 2024 presidential election by Christopher D. Cook. And listen, you can get this report. It's not that long. Go to democratic autopsy.org that's one word. Democratic autopsy.org let's go to one that doesn't need much elaboration. All kinds of books and articles been written on it. Biden's Betrayal.
- [08:22]
Sam Rosenthal
Yeah. So Roots Action was the first national group to call on Biden not to seek reelection. We started right after the midterms in 2022. We launched a campaign that was called Don't Run, Joe. And then after he said he was running, we launched a campaign called Step Aside, Joe. We went to the DNC winter meeting in the beginning of 2023 in Philadelphia, and we were trying to talk to DNC members, we were talking to media, and we were saying, look, this is a uniquely unpopular president. He does not have the party faithful, the rank and file of the Democratic base in line anymore. Through a combination of factors, he's hemorrhaging support and he's going to lose to Trump. We were, of course, reviled and mocked and ignored for the most part. But it turns out that if Biden had stepped aside when we were first calling for him to, we may have had a very different outcome. Of course, the corollary to our campaign was that we were also calling for an open Democratic primary process, not the sort of half coronation of Kamala Harris that we saw, but a process wherein voters would go through a normal democratic primary process and select a candidate who they wanted to see at top of the ticket.
- [09:30]
Ralph Nader
Don't you think he had another kind of betrayal on foreign policy, military policy, corporate welfare? He was pretty good on some other issues, the public lands. He supported solar energy, wind power. But basically he was a corporate Democrat for the most part, never challenged Wall street, didn't fund budgets for prosecuting corporate crime, and he defiantly said that if Congress passed a universal health care bill, he'd veto it. I mean, imagine that a majority of people, including a lot of conservatives, want Medicare for all, everybody and nobody out, more efficient and less mind blowing in terms of complex procedures, denial of benefits, inscrutable bills, et cetera, and very much more expensive. Wouldn't you say that's another kind of betrayal?
- [10:22]
Sam Rosenthal
Absolutely. Our contention in the campaign wasn't primarily that Biden was too old or enfeebled, though, that it was also clear that some of those factors are in play. But it was that he was misreading the political moment, that there was a populous surge on the left and the right. There was a sense voters had especially younger voters, voters of color, that they were getting screwed by corporate America. And instead of running on a change platform or leaning into the populism, Biden told donors nothing fundamentally would change. And he was serious about that. I mean, there was some decent green reforms that he implemented in the ira, but for the most part, this was a president who is very much in lockstep with the pro Corporate wing of the Democratic Democratic Party. And it's just a very antiquated way of doing politics in the 2000 and twenties. We're no longer in that place. And when you talk about foreign policy, there's no more searing betrayal than Biden's completely unconditional support for Israel as it waged an onslaught in Gaza whose objective was clearly to kill as many people, men, women, children as possible in that strip of land. And young people notice this, Arab American voters, notice this, Muslim American voters, critical, critical core constituencies for the Democratic Party. And they thought, this is a president who has antipathy for me, for the issues I care about, for what I want to see in the world. I want an end to arms shipments to Israel. I don't want us to be sending all of our tax dollars to fund this genocide. But Biden completely ignored voluminous protests on this issue. And people notice, especially younger voters.
- [11:53]
Ralph Nader
What about pushing NATO to Russia's borders? He's part of that. Clinton, Obama.
- [11:58]
Sam Rosenthal
Yes.
- [11:58]
Ralph Nader
The NATO lining up Eastern European countries, arming them with the military industrial complex's profits and setting up the stage for Putin on Ukraine.
- [12:08]
Sam Rosenthal
Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing we worry about a lot at roots action. We spend a lot of time doing pro peace foreign policy work. And we worry that the Democrats are going to leapfrog the Republicans to become the pro war party. Now, that may all change in 24 or 48 hours if Trump is serious about invading Venezuela, which it seems like he might be, but for the last few years at least, Trump has styled himself as a pro peace president and somewhat convincingly to his base, I think. And we really worry that the Democrats are going to permanently cede the mantle of being comparatively pro peace. They're not good on anti militarism, but better than the Republican Party, maybe, that they are going to lose that label for a whole generation of voters who are frankly, very confused and disgusted with their foreign policy.
- [12:55]
Ralph Nader
You have two sections, Sam, that seem to overlap. One is called abandoning the base and the other is called losing the working class. There an overlap? There.
- [13:04]
Sam Rosenthal
There is an overlap, yeah. And, you know, I think we're talking about different parts of the Democratic Party base, but broadly, what we're talking about in those sections is crystallized Chuck Schumer's famous adage from 2017, where he said, for every voter we lose in the cities, we can pick up two voters in the suburbs. This has been a disastrous electoral policy for the Democratic Party, but nevertheless, they continue mostly to pursue this policy that they see themselves as courting. Well, Educated, comparatively well off Americans with advanced degrees, white collar jobs. And they think, well, the working class has abandoned us in places like West Virginia, which was a Democratic Party stronghold for decades. And so we're not going to try to reach out to them anymore. We're not going to run on policy that benefits the working class, on populist, anti corporate policy. We're going to instead continue to pivot to the center, pivot to sort of socially progressive, maybe economically moderate, quote, moderate voters in the suburbs, and there just are not enough votes there. I think it's abundantly clear. But nevertheless, the party continues to pursue this.
- [14:08]
Ralph Nader
Well, as you point out in your report, it's even worse than that. Kamala Harris campaigned with Republican Liz Cheney, who supported the disastrous, cruel invasion of Iraq by her father, Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush. But she campaigns with Lyn Cheney and she keeps her distance from the most popular politician in America, Bernie Sanders, who in her campaign was going around the country trying to support a weak corporate Democrat out of loyalty and fear of the opposition alternative Trump. And she wouldn't even campaign with them. Isn't that what you're really saying?
- [14:46]
Sam Rosenthal
Absolutely. And the other person she spent a lot of time campaigning with was Mark Cuban, who's a billionaire mogul who couldn't have less in common with the average American voter. I mean, this is someone who occupies the top stratum of American society. And I don't know why the campaign felt that this would be a winning duo of ambassadors. And it's for us, very much redolent of the attitude that the party, the Democratic Party, adopted the cycle, which is that voters want to see big names. We want to appeal to, again the, quote, moderate swing voter. We don't need to worry about driving up the base and people in red states who are poor, we're not going to worry about them right now. You know, what are they going to do? Vote for Trump, vote against their material interests? And in fact, in some cases, that's exactly what happened. So this is a party that we feel is focus group tested to death, has not made any attempt to pivot from the trajectory they've been on since the 2016 election, and that includes Joe Biden's election in 2020. They won the presidential race, but this was a referendum on Trump. It wasn't a testament to Biden's strength as a candidate, far from it. It was a testament to how unpopular Trump had become. And you see, the same thing is happening now. I expect Democrats will do well in the midterms, but I would just caution all your listeners on their interpretation of that event that that does not mean Democrats have found popular messaging necessarily. It might just mean that people are once again sick of Donald Trump.
- [16:10]
Ralph Nader
Well, this is a Democratic Party. Never looks itself in the mirror. It keeps losing to the worst GOP in history. Corrupt Wall street, corporate anti renewable energy, bigger military budget, opposed to campaign finance reform, opposed to consumer protection, hate unions, bad on women and children. You know, if you can't beat a party like that, you better look yourself in the mirror. And they never do. They look around for a tiny third party candidate like Jill nine on the Green Party and blame her for the loss.
- [16:43]
Sam Rosenthal
Right.
- [16:43]
Ralph Nader
In 2020.
- [16:45]
Sam Rosenthal
Right.
- [16:45]
Ralph Nader
So absolutely, very good that you're doing this. But the point is that internally, isn't it true that the Democratic Party, they don't fire people who lose elections? You know, the Democratic National Committee is pretty much the same old crew with a different name at the top. Martin and.
- [17:02]
Sam Rosenthal
Exactly.
- [17:03]
Ralph Nader
Schumer is still in charge of disastrous candidate picks like in South Carolina and in West Virginia against Lindsey Graham and Senator McConnell, where the Democrats raised over 200 million in those two campaigns and had their lunch eaten by the incumbents who they never quit. They never told, you're fired. There's no new, no new energy at all in this party. And it continues all the way to the present time. You can't get through to Mr. Martin, the head of the Democratic National Committee. Loyal Democrats, can't get through to him. Mark Green, for example, can't get through to him. I'm sure Robert Rush, who just came out with the 10 point compact for America. Sam. Which you should look at. Democrats should have a Compact for America to focus and deal with the issue of what does the Democratic Party stand for anyway? There's so many people asking. So you have this insularity. You go down the Democratic National Committee headquarters like a mausoleum. Nobody goes through the front door. You have Democrats slinking in the side door from Congress to sit in their little enclaves and dial for dollars and then go back to their offices in Congress. So you think this report gets tough enough on the Democrats on that score, they just refuse to examine themselves.
- [18:21]
Sam Rosenthal
Sure. And one of the reasons we wanted to write this report is because we haven't seen a similar type of reflection from the DNC from anyone inside the Democratic Party apparatus. So there's reporting that there's some kind of autopsy underway inside the dnc, but the subsequent reporting was that there was so much infighting about who's looking bad, which sort of sect of consultant types looks bad in that report and which comes out on top that it became too rancorous. It's not clear that they're going to release that report. We think this is completely complete political malpractice. If you can't have an assessment by the party of what went wrong, they are doomed to run a similar campaign in 2028. Trump may not be the candidate in 2028. I'm not sure we know yet, but it's likely that there will be an acolyte of Trump in that position. And we can't afford to have another MAGA person have four years in the White House, eight years in the White House into the next decade. This would be disastrous for the country and the world. So while we could have been harder on the Democratic Party, this is an earnest attempt to start a dialogue about what went wrong. This is not just an attempt to hit the Democratic Party over its failures, though it's somewhat that too. But we really want engagement. We hope a lot of people read this report inside the party, outside the party, young candidates who are running campaigns, sort of outsider campaigns, and really think about some of the conclusions we've come to in the hopes that we do not reproduce those same mistakes.
- [19:47]
Ralph Nader
We'll get to the conclusions in a moment. You can get this whole report free, listeners. Go to democraticautopsy.org the next section you have on failing on Israel and Gaza. You've touched on it, but one thing that hasn't been touched on is that the Biden administration went along with the vast death undercount of Hamas, which has its own reasons for not wanting to count fully the dead. It's really about 600,000. Almost 200,000 more than U.S. soldiers were killed in World War II. By the way, listeners, it's pretty outrageous when the Palestinian people who are not recognized for their humanity and right to live end up not even being counted after they're genocidally mass murdered. Is there anything else you want to say on that before we get to the next section? It turned off more than just Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. It turned off a lot of young people to stay home in 2024.
- [20:43]
Sam Rosenthal
You know, I'll just say from a personal standpoint, I'm a youngish Jewish American and I was horrified by Israel's actions. I was horrified by the Biden administration's complicity in this. Just for context, 600,000 Gazans would be like a quarter of the population murdered in just two years. It's an unthinkable toll. And we have still not had any kind of reckoning from the party for its total support of this campaign. And the other thing I want to add is that when you talk about voters interacting with the administration, so many people were able to see on their phones, on Twitter, on TikTok, on Instagram, that what they were being told by the State Department and by other parts of the administration was not true, that these were block after block leveled. Any person with common sense can see that if you completely level an entire neighborhood, people are going to die in massive numbers. And so we knew that this wasn't a correct toll. But the administration kept saying, well, Hamas's figures are inflated. You can't believe what they say. And actually Israel has exercised extreme restraint in killing civilians. And that's just not the case whatsoever. In fact, as I said earlier, the goal almost certainly was to kill as many civilians as possible. So this is something that the party is going to have to reckon with. There are many voters, I think, especially voters under 40, again, those groups of Muslim American, Arab American voters who are going to need to see a lot more from the party in terms of its support for Palestine so that they can start to think about being supportive of the Democratic Party again.
- [22:20]
Ralph Nader
You have a section on losing young and progressive voters and you end up with a path forward. You can combine the two for our listeners and enlighten us. What are you saying?
- [22:31]
Sam Rosenthal
Sure. So you know, I think this is a party that needs to start thinking about the next generation. We cite in our report that in the middle of Biden's first term or the middle of Biden's only term, 94% of Democratic registered voters under 30 said they didn't want him to run again, 94%. And that was completely ignored by the party. So we think that we need to have an about face from the party where it listens to its constituencies and not to the donor class. So that's one of our top recommendations, is that we need campaigns of candidates who shun corporate interests and influence. We need campaigns and candidates who say, I don't have someone like Tony west, who Kamala Harris had her brother in law, an uber C suite person. We don't have people like that on our advisory boards. We don't have senior consultants who come from corporate America who are going to do all that they can to make sure that this policy has no real teeth, no real effect on corporate America's ability to make more and more money. We need the party to step away from these influences. Another recommendation we have is that we Want to see an end to these coronation style primaries, Democratic Party primaries, where it's clear what the pro corporate wing of the party wants to happen. We saw it in 2020, we saw it in 2016 where the party had, during the primary process there was a surge of enthusiasm for people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren to some extent. And instead of even making an attempt to embrace that, the party said, no, we're going to go with this person who's been in the Senate for decades. We're going to go with this person who is associated very strongly with Bill Clinton, the spouse of Bill Clinton, who's also been in the Senate for a long time. These are not change candidates. These are status quo candidates. And it is abundantly clear that voters want change candidates. The last time the party ran a change candidate, it was Barack Obama and he was hugely popular. We have our qualms about the way he conducted his two terms, but he was a hugely popular president. And then finally, we want to see a party that has a forward looking agenda. They can't keep saying we're not Trump, we're not Trump, or we're not J.D. vance. They have to say, this is what we're going to do for you, the voter. We are going to, you know, we're about to see ACA subsidies expire. Millions of people are going to lose affordable health care in this country. Why is it not the Democratic Party policy across the party that they support single payer universal health care? This is an easy, easy counterweight to Republicans letting these ACA subsidies lapse and kicking millions of people off their health care. So that's the kind of policy that we want to see from the Democratic Party and they need to adopt it urgently. They can't keep focus, grouping things and tinkering around the margins. The stakes are far too high.
- [25:12]
Ralph Nader
Well, you know, there are some areas in your report that are unfortunately too thin. By my judgment. You do call for raising the minimum wage, of course, you do call for union empowering legislation without mentioning the need to repeal Taft Hartley act of 1947, the most anti worker law in the Western world in terms of organizing. But tell us more about what the unions did in these elections. They just sit there at the FFL headquarters looking at the White House and saying, lead us. We're not going to push you, just lead us. And of course they don't lead them. They're looking at a corporate Democratic White House with Obama and later Biden. Give us what you think should be done to get the unions to be a real Force pushing the Democratic Party away from their corporatist handcuffs.
- [26:02]
Sam Rosenthal
Yeah, we've certainly been supportive at roots action of efforts to democratize and radicalize union leadership. You have examples like the uaw, Shawn Faint at the uaw, who's ushered in a much more militant brand of union fighting. We hope we'll see in the next couple of years. I think they're working on some campaigns that we hope will be big campaigns there. But we think that it would be great to see leadership like that at many internationals across the country. Union membership is at a catastrophic low in this country, and we need to have a Democratic Party that pushes the idea that union membership is a good thing, that unions protect your rights, that they help you, not that unions are thorns in the side of the party and corporate America to be combated, to be massaged into obsolescence. We need a much more militant union movement with many more members, and we need the party to be promoting that movement, not fighting that movement. It's a lot of steps to get there. But I think, you know, one of the best things that folks can do is to see if there's the ability to join a union in your workplace, to start a union in your workplace and try to become part of that more militant movement. We're going to need millions of people to join that movement if we want any sort of truck with the Democratic Party.
- [27:17]
Ralph Nader
Well, there might have been a spot in your report, Sam, about demonstrations, more about marches and demonstrations in front of the Democratic National Committee, the FFL CIO headquarters, you know, to really give visibility and get the press interested because they're just not covering this. Another area that's missing in your report, unless I missed it, is that the Democratic Party contracts out its campaigns to these corporate conflicted consulting firms who have corporate clients year after year, and they decide how to raise the money, who to raise the money from, what the messaging is going to be, what the scheduling of the candidates on the campaign tour. Why didn't you include that? Because that's basically the ultimate sabotage of the American people by the Democratic Party. It isn't a party running its own campaigns. And there are a few exceptions like Elizabeth Warren, who don't do that, but most of it is these many contracts to these myriad of corporate consulting firms. The last report I saw that was 2021 by the Intercept. Ryan Grim. There hasn't been any report on that by the New York Times, Post, Wall Street Journal. I know because I've made many calls urging them. They're missing a big story here. What's your take on subcontract of contracting out electoral campaigns?
- [28:34]
Sam Rosenthal
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And that's part of what we're touching on, talking about the revolving door between consultancies that work on corporate campaigns and then go over to Democratic Party campaign. I think that it's very much an effort to blunt progressivism to blunt populist platform sort of in its infancy at the planning level before the campaign launches. And we absolutely should reject this. We need more transparency. We should call for candidates have more transparency in who is staffing their campaigns, who are the senior advisors, who are the people who recently worked for Uber, for the real estate lobby, for Goldman Sachs, for big oil, who are now enjoying a senior sinecure at some presidential campaign. And until we have that level of transparency, it's part and parcel of big money in politics. Right. These are the opaque processes that keep our country beholden to corporate interests, to the billionaire class, and keep us from being able to see into the black box of who is funding and who is advising candidates who are running for the highest level of government. So I agree we could have said much more. We could have said much more across the board about a lot of the different points we touch on. But as I said earlier, we really want this. We hope earnestly that this is the beginning of a conversation and not just our sole salvo here. We want to hear more discussion of this.
- [29:54]
Ralph Nader
Well, I think you failed in not naming enough names. So let me put it this way. Roots Action has got enough people around the country to have credibility as loyal to the Democratic Party. But critical, who would you demand resign, that is, resign their position, like Martin, head of dnc, or resigned their role in controlling candidate policies and choices, like Chuck Zummer in the US Senate? Give us some names because I know some listeners are really getting upset listening to us right now and I'm going to respond to one of their upsets in a moment and basically saying that nothing has changed, nothing will change unless we get a complete fumigation of the Democratic Party apparatus and leadership at the top in Washington and at most state Democratic committees as well. What's your take on that? Let's get some names. Who would you replace?
- [30:51]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, I certainly we've called reactionist, called for Chuck Schumer not to seek reelection. We think he's a fairly feeble leader of the party and he's no longer speaking to really any segment of the party's base. He's captured by corporate interests. He's captured by the political process as it is. And we want him to go. We don't want him to run again for reelection. And if he stepped down, that would be okay with us, too, although we might not get someone much better in there without an open election.
- [31:20]
Ralph Nader
Ken Martin, I'm not sure this in the report.
- [31:23]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, the report has to do more with policy and with the 2024 process. I think Schumer was part of that and certainly was part of shoring up Biden's ardently pro Israel stance during the crisis in Gaza. But you know that we wanted to keep the aperture sort of narrowly focused on the Harris campaign, on the Biden campaign and on the Harris campaign. So we have lots of thoughts about lots of members of the Democratic Party and the sort of DNC apparatus. Probably many more thoughts than we have time to go into right now. But we wanted to make sure that this report was narrowly focused on what happened. It's an autopsy report what happened in 2024.
- [32:04]
Ralph Nader
But people made it happen. And unless you focus on people, you're not going to get any attention in the media. Like Nancy Pelosi is touted as the greatest speaker in American history by Joe Biden. Are you kidding? Take a look at the record. He sabotaged the party in so many ways, refused to take so many impeachment articles that could have really increased the likelihood of removing Trump in 2019 and 2020. She just went with the Ukraine Hunter Biden issue. Not exactly a kitchen table issue for most Americans. And they just are mutual admiration society, reinforcing their own sinecures and strangleholding the Democratic Party and telling tens of millions of Americans that they better vote Democratic because they have nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to go. People stay home. That's where they can go. I'll give you an example. Nancy Pelosi lost the 2010 House election. She lost the 2012. She lost the 2014. She lost the 2016 against the horrible Republican Party, by the way. And with a Democratic president, she still lost. She won 2018. She just barely won 2020. She lost 2022 and she lost 2024. How does that account for being touted as a great speaker and a brilliant politician? Your response?
- [33:31]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, we certainly haven't touted Nancy Pelosi as those things. I think we've been very clear at Roots Action and in other venues that Nancy Pelosi is someone who absolutely was committed to upholding the status quo, who spent a great deal of time maneuvering behind the scenes to blunt the influence of progressive politics, specifically to rein in people like Bernie Sanders to take people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar under her wing in an effort to sort of turn them away from a more combative stance towards the party. So we're in good company here. We are not fans of Nancy Pelosi and we're not fans of Chuck Schumer. And I think you're completely right that we need to see a sea change in the party. We need to see a change in leadership at the top. And by the way, Hakeem Jeffries, just because he's of a different generation than those two, it doesn't mean at all that he's better. He's the same kind of corporate Democrat that we've seen over and over again from the party. So we expect more business as usual from Jefferies. But we don't think that that is going to usher in a winning politics for the party. And we hope that reports like this one are other activism, activism by other groups are going to start to move that process so that we can change the fundamental makeup of the party in addition to many, many other types of activism that we're engaged in.
- [34:50]
Ralph Nader
Well, texhumer and Hakeem Jeffries are telling their Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate, don't mention impeachment, shut up on impeachment. Even though Amy Raskin is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, having a shadow hearing to educate the public on impeachment by the Democrats, they can have their own informal hearing on Capitol Hill with press and witnesses. Even he had to recede after he'd called it a good idea. The only power left in the Constitution that Trump cannot run roughshod over and violate is the impeachment power by our founders. So why didn't you crank that in in terms of a test of the party and a policy situation? I'll give you an example of how the people are so far ahead of the Democratic Party, even though the Democratic Party doesn't know how to really go after Trump with language that he uses against them, corrupt. He's a liar, he's an extortionist. He's a woman abuser. He's a thief, self enriching himself from the White House. He talks violent against immigrants on and on and on. He's against environmental protection. He thinks climate violence is a hoax. He is strip mining our defenses against oncoming pandemics. He's anti union. He thinks American workers are overpaid, you know, on and on. And they're failing. So the impeachment issue can bring all this together. And you need to put out a report on that, for example, at the Linda Lake Poll on September 15th. And it would have been much worse for Trump. Now, 49% of the people thought he should be impeached in swing districts and 44% were opposed. Your reaction?
- [36:37]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, I think Democrats have determined through their experience in the first Trump administration that impeachment is a political loser. I don't agree with them necessarily, but that's certainly what's informing their stance towards impeachment right now. Now, if they retake the House at the midterms, I think the pressure will be much higher, and it should be much higher from outside groups to pick this up in earnest again. And as you say, there are innumerable impeachable offenses that Trump has committed. Everyone knows this. It's a question of whether there is a political will and whether people like us can pressure the Democrats to pursue this line again, because right now there's a widespread feeling in the party that this is a political loser. It looks like sore loser ism, and that they're not going to get a lot of electoral advantage out of it. So it's up to us once again to put the pressure on the party to say we want to see this. If they have control of the House after the midterms, there's going to be real pressure, I believe, from many quarters for Democrats to pursue this.
- [37:37]
Ralph Nader
Sam, you're missing something. The time is before the election, the only time you're going to get cracks in the GOP control of Congress. If they see their political future in 2026 catapulting downward or they support a president who's dropping in the polls, economy is getting worse, unemployment increasing, prices increasing, stock market starting to get very shaky. That's the leverage they have. That's what happened with Nixon. Nixon won 49 out of 50 states in 1972. He was 60% in the polls. Less than two years later, facing a certain impeachment in the House and removal in the Senate, he quit for transgressions that are a fraction of 1% of the criminal enterprise that Trump is presiding over. As a dictator, he's called by some Der Fuhrer. And so it's before the 2026 election, Sam, that Democrats have a leverage with a slice of the Republican Party, fearing that they're going to lose control of the Congress. Don't you agree?
- [38:41]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, I disagree a little bit. You know, House reelection cycles are incredibly short. As soon as Republicans win, if they win their seat again in 2026, they have to look to 2028. This is the way it is to be a House member. Less so in the Senate, but in the House, yes. And this is going to come with the extra added pressure, especially if Trump is talking about seeking a third term, which I believe he will be. And I think that this would be an incredibly advantageous atmosphere in which to say, what are we going to do? We are at a hinge point. Are we going to let a dictator walk into a third term, something that hasn't happened in this country for decades in the White House? Are we going to let someone abrogate the Constitution to install himself again? And, you know, we're seeing disenchantment from within the Republican Party already. I think it will only be exacerbated if people feel that Donald Trump, a man approaching his 80s, is going to tank the reputation of the party as abetting a dictatorial and frankly, very, very unpopular president. So I think there is also an opportunity after the midterms, we have to exert pressure not just on Republicans to vote with Democrats, but on Democrats to take this up. They will not do this. They're too worried about the political fallout. They won't do something like this unless there's pressure from members of their own.
- [39:53]
Ralph Nader
Party about the polls, more and more fortifying the Democrats to go for the impeachment move with shadow hearings to begin with before they take control. If they do in 2026. By the way, I would suggest that you drop this issue of Trump running for a third term. It's not going to happen. His health is not going to hold out. He'll never be able to persuade even his toadies on the Supreme Court that the clear words of the Constitution can be abrogated by the six injustices that have given him so much immunity thus far. Sam, I have to ask you this because I'm sure some of our listeners want this question to be asked. The Democratic Party cannot be reformed. It's too deep in the muck of corporatism. It's up to the hilt in compromised positions. It has the wrong people entrenched leading them. They are opposing any younger candidates challenging corporate Democrats in the primary. They're still dialing furiously for corporate dollars. They're still kneeling before Wall street, so to speak. They haven't repudiated the oil, gas and coal industry to the degree they should, even though they've come out for renewable energy under Biden. Here's the question. We got to have new parties. 60% of the people always say they want a new third party, but they end up not voting for it because the system is winner take all. It's Electoral College and electoral College manipulation and so forth. They want to be with the winner. They really don't follow through on their poll. But there's the Green Party, as you know, there's the Democratic Socialist Party, there's a Libertarian Party. To what extent you think that they should be more respected, given valid access, easier so they can perform the way third parties did in the 19th century, when the Liberty Party in 1840 came out against slavery and started the movement electorally on abolition. And of course, many other parties, the Women's Suffrage Party, the Populist Party, supporting labor, supporting farmers, regulating railroads and banks. You know the history. They served a very important function on the two parties. What do you say?
- [42:10]
Sam Rosenthal
Well, I'm all for third party runs where it's viable, but I think that my project personally and at Roots action and through other organizing I've done is to win. I think it's really important to win elections, to be able to install people in office, to be able to provide the sort of.
- [42:25]
Ralph Nader
You think the third parties can push the Democrats to be more progressive, to take a better agenda that you recommend in your report?
- [42:32]
Sam Rosenthal
I think that's possible. But as you just alluded to, there are serious structural impediments to running candidates on a third party line. And this varies, you know, by state and municipality to some extent. But you're talking about obtaining and maintaining ballot access, a ballot line. You're talking about being able to drive up huge vote totals in many states so that you can hold on to your party's ability to run candidates on that line. I think right now, in this country, for better or worse, the way politics is understood is that we have a Republican Party and we have a Democratic Party, and that's it. And I'm not talking about you or me. I'm talking about how your average person who starts thinking about the election a few weeks before it happens, if that how they understand the party. You know, when I go canvassing, which I do with some frequency often, the first question people ask me will be, is this person a member of the Democratic Party? Because they are so strongly identified still with the Democratic Party. So right now, I think in many places, in the majority of places I would venture it's really hard to run and win on a third party line. We've seen Dan Osborne, for example, ran on an independent line and did very well comparatively. There are other examples of it, but it's few and far between. And I think that's why, you know, you talk about groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. A lot of the strategy there has been to win Democratic Party primaries and then to have the candidate win the general election running as a Democrat. I don't like this system. I don't think it's perfect. But I think from a sort of mercenary perspective right now, it's going to work in more situations than running on a third party line will work. I personally would love to see the rise of more parties. I don't think that people like Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden should be in the same party. They don't have the same political analysis. But as it currently stands in this country, I don't think that that is likely to happen over the next 10 years, maybe longer than that.
- [44:25]
Ralph Nader
Well, two quick comments. Don't discount third party wins at the local level. Local elections, that's where they can get a foothold. And there's so many local elections when there's only one candidate, the incumbent, like Massachusetts Democrat, Texas Republican. So it's wide open for a second candidate. And second, I've heard this now is not the time argument for 50 years, Sam, you're a proud recipient of that legacy. Now is not the time in 1972, now is not the time in 1978. Now is not the time in 2004. We've been talking Rosenthal, who edited the brand new report autopsy How Democrats Lost the White House, issued by Roots Action led by Norman Solomon. And it's a report on the 2024 presidential election by Christopher D. Hook. And you can get a free copy quick by going to democraticautopsy.org thank you very much, Sam.
- [45:23]
Sam Rosenthal
Thank you so much.
- [45:24]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Sam Rosenthal. We have a link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com up next, Ralph answers some of your listener questions. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mulcaiber from the.
- [45:37]
Sam Rosenthal
National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, December 26, 2025. I'm Russell Mulkhyberg. 711 will pay $4.5 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging that the convenience store chain violated a 2018 FTC consent order by acquiring a fuel outlet in St. Petersburg, Florida, without providing the commission prior notice. The $4.5 million penalty marks the largest civil penalty ever collected in a Federal Trade Commission case involving a prior notice violation. It also is the largest negotiated settlement of any order violation in the FTC Bureau of Competition's History. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mulcyrer.
- [46:24]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. All right, we're going to take an opportunity to open up the mailbag here. Ralph, our first question to you or a comment comes from a longtime listener, Stephen Fournier from Hartford, Connecticut. And he says it's clear that Trump is exceeding his constitutional authority in many ways and that this is costing Americans money and goodwill. There must be a way to compensate us for his torturous malfeasance. Is there no legal mechanism to restrain him or hold him personally liable for our damage? He has deep pockets. That's from Stephen Fournier from Hartford, Connecticut.
- [47:03]
Ralph Nader
Well, Steve, you know, you've thought a lot about this yourself. It's very limited. It's very hard to sue a government official or elected official, especially with today's Supreme Court. But there are always creative strategies, you know, to raise the issue even if you lose in court and develop a theory of damages. But sovereign immunity is still king, and our Fuhrer takes full advantage of that. Now in his personal business enterprises, you know, he's using the White House as a business operation, he is subjected to his companies to be sued. He could be sued by people who were burned under the cryptocurrency speculative enterprises of the Trump operation. So in terms of his private business, he can be sued under traditional contract and tort law, but the suit is not against him personally. It's against the companies. And the companies don't get the immunity from the Supreme Court.
- [48:02]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you for that question, Stephen.
- [48:04]
Russell Mulkhyberg
This next question comes from Earl Ammerman the fourth, and it's about election laws. When Trump says private donations are funding the White House's new ballroom, there's a possibility that the Trump administration is violating election laws, especially if individual donors are donating over $3,500 to per election cycle to fund the ballroom. If Donald Trump wears his MAGA hat while promoting the new ballroom, then election laws apply because MAGA hats are election memorabilia. $3,500 campaign contribution limits apply because private donations to fund a new ballroom could potentially violate campaign contribution laws. Super PACs would not be able to fund the new White House ballroom because if they did, especially if Trump wears a MAGA hat while promoting the ballroom, and then that potentially represents a violation of election laws because it's illegal for super pacs to coordinate with candidates or politicians with campaign war chests like Donald trump unless super PACs are canvassing door to door with the candidate.
- [49:06]
Ralph Nader
First of all, it depends where that money is going to. It's not going to his campaign fund or to some Republican campaign fund to fall under the election laws like you suggest. There's an easier answer to your concern, and that is that private donations for federal construction like the ballroom are flat out illegal. They violate the exclusive authority of Congress to appropriate fund and they are not allowed under the Constitution and the Anti Deficiency act from nullifying or repudiating or diluting congressional appropriation policy. Otherwise Congress will lose its authority under Congress. Any super rich group of billionaires can say they want a weapons system and they'll fund it, or they want something done on a waterway and they'll fund it. So it's flat out illegal to begin with. Unfortunately, the press is not onto it yet. Except a few days ago the Historic Preservation Commission filed suit against the ballroom enterprise. And they also included this argument not only saying that Trump didn't pass the plans by for review before he destroyed the East Wing, but they also included constitutional arguments such as I've just described. Now, having said that, the criminal violation is by Trump because the money is going to to a Trump entity to build the ballroom. The corporations like Microsoft and Apple and others who are making these multimillion dollar contributions, they are not directly violating the law. It's the receiver who is violating the Anti Deficiency Act. But they're going to have a problem deducting the contributions and other wires that are going to law at what they're doing in terms of appropriate shareholder value, respect and whether they are actually engaging in bribery. So from their point of view, they have an exposure under those laws. So the whole operation is funded privately. It's unconstitutional and violates a federal criminal statute called the Anti Deficiency Act. Bruce Fein has been on this program describing it and so you can always download his arguments, but I've summarized them.
- [51:32]
Steve Scrovan
All right, very good. Our next question comes from a young man, Matthew Prescott, who describes himself as an anxious and American young adult. He's 23 years old in a rapidly changing world. And he says my biggest problem, the biggest problem many of my peers and myself see is the rise of social media. Our personal lives and the research sadly agree we're more lonely, more addicted, more mentally ill and more dissatisfied than any prior generation. More importantly, our very ability to discuss and face important issues feels ruined by algorithmic polarization and fragmentation. And he says, in your opinions, what will it take for change to be made? And to you, Ralph, in particular, he wants to know if you are A young man today who truly believed this to be the greatest problem of your generation, what would you do to face it head on?
- [52:20]
Ralph Nader
I'd throw away my iPhone. I wouldn't engage the Internet. I would drop out from the whole AI craziness and live a life that perhaps your parents lived 30, 40, 50 years ago, before the Internet gulag grabbed the throats of tens of millions of youngsters, including their minds and hearts, and separated them from their parents, their community and nature. There is a Luddite group that is doing that, forming chapters around the country. We've had one of the organizers on our show. You just have to cut out. You have to drop out. Just like if you use cash or checks, they're less able to manipulate and exploit you and penalize you and give you all the fine print that staggers your freedom on a daily basis. Use cash and check. Don't get into the payment system. It's amazing how hard it is to persuade young people. Just drop out.
- [53:19]
Steve Scrovan
The person you're referring to the group you're referring to the Luddite Club. Our guest was Logan Lane, who at the time was just a high school senior. And if you go, Matthew, to our February 4, 2023 episode called Workplace Surveillance, you'll hear Logan's interview there. And you can probably get in touch with the Luddite Club. They just disconnected from what Ralph said, disconnected from their iPhones and all the social media stuff. And we should probably do a follow up with her Ralph, see how it's going.
- [53:50]
Ralph Nader
Y they picked up flip phones instead. You know, when iPhones are banned in classrooms in elementary school, state after state, including conservatives, while liberal states, the children feel liberated. They start talking with one another. Discussions start getting more expansive, anxieties reduced. You know, there's some people who check their phones 20, 30 times an hour. I mean, it's crazy how addicted they are. You just have to get, get rid of them.
- [54:21]
Steve Scrovan
Yeah, it's tough for a young person when your social circle is on all of that and you don't want to be excluded. That's why I think Logan Lane's idea about forming a club of like minded people gives you a community that you.
- [54:36]
Sam Rosenthal
Can be a part of.
- [54:37]
Ralph Nader
That's right. A small community is very reinforcing. Steve was quite right on that. So you don't feel alone and you have a small community and there are clusters of small communities and they have a network and they get underway, start a movement of liberation. These corporations want to control you with their technology and AI is only the latest and perhaps doomsday manifestation of their drive for power and profits.
- [55:05]
Russell Mulkhyberg
This question comes from Maureen B. She asks, other countries are powering cities with these enormous data centers. The USA should require the AI and tech companies show sustainable energy use before they can put them online. It's high time we mandate sustainable energy. These companies have the knowledge and financial ability to do so.
- [55:27]
Ralph Nader
Absolutely. They should be required to use that, but they should also be regulated much more. When they build these data centers. The demand for electricity drives up your own monthly electricity bill in your apartment and home. And that's been documented. And that's one reason why two Democratic candidates for the Utility Regulatory Commission in Georgia upset the incumbent Republican candidates recently. Because people were saying these electricity bills are going through the roof and we know what's causing it. At least some of what is causing it. It's poor regulation. And these data centers. We have to question the very rationale. What are these data centers? There's a small company starting out and they have a technology to build to make chips that use far less energy than Nvidia has been using through their chips and the sequence. So what is all this data? It's all our personal data. These monster data centers, contaminating water, taking up precious land, making noise. When are we going to say enough is enough and take back our country from these corporate predators, these corporate supremacists, these corporate coercers, and these corporate, yes, criminals? There's a corporate crime wave in this country. Just read the corporate crime Reporter. Read the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. Even though they have advertisements, they report a lot more corporate crime than our weak democracies being able to handle or our inadequate prosecutorial budgets can manage.
- [57:07]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you for your questions. I want to thank our guest again, Sam Rosenthal. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show for you podcast listeners. Stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Sanders with in case you haven't heard and a transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [57:27]
Sam Rosenthal
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's at Capitol HillCitizen.com the producers of the RAF Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy.
- [57:38]
Steve Scrovan
Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin.
- [57:41]
Sam Rosenthal
Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:44]
Steve Scrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:49]
Sam Rosenthal
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:54]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, everybody.
- [58:18]
Sam Rosenthal
The system pulls you down.
- [58:26]
Steve Scrovan
This is John Crumshow. And joining me in studio is attorney Bill Maestas. Welcome to Politics or Pedagogy.
- [58:36]
Ralph Nader
Good to be here, John, how are you?
- [58:38]
Steve Scrovan
Very good, thank you. Good to talk with you because you spent a lot of time in your career and as a public defender and coincidence of coincidences, you also knew someone who was a prosecutor, Alex Kenna, who has been on the show and gave me a couple of interviews for Politics or Pedagogy. Tell me about your experience with Alex Kenna, how she was as a prosecutor.
- [59:05]
Ralph Nader
She was a gentle soul. She was unlike most prosecutors I've, I've seen in my, in my term as a public defender. She distinguished herself as somebody really caring and she really liked me and I really liked her. And that's something that I really appreciated. I understood that, you know, she was a hard working prosecutor and she fulfilled her job as well as most anybody camp. But she did it with a lot of grace.
- [59:39]
Steve Scrovan
Now, you also had a chance when President Biden was running for re election to talk to him about a prosecution, to talk to him about the situation involving public defenders. Tell us about that experience.
- [59:55]
Russell Mulkhyberg
Oh, yeah.
- [59:56]
Ralph Nader
I was in Nevada and he was running for President in 2020 and he said, and then I was working on his campaign.