Nader decries Obama, McCain amid packed house

If the standing-room-only crowd at the Bagdad Theater was any indication, the American people have not heard the last of Ralph Nader. Although he predicts Oregon will go for Barack Obama, the presidential candidate said he intends to carry the torch for a world of peace and justice. From the audience’s robust responses, it seems the movement Nader wants to create may have begun.

He urged the over 600 people who attended his talk on Monday evening to “work for a world you truly believe in.” He is on the Oregon ballot as a Peace Party candidate.

Denied access to national TV and radio exposure for most of the campaign, and elbowed out of the debates by the powers that be, he drew the loudest applause when one of his supporters urged trying President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Chaney for war crimes.

“It takes courage to support Ralph Nader,” cried Greg Kafoury, who works on the local campaign. His supporters decried a government of greed and fraud, of growth for the sake of growth, “like addicts” and a country that is “owned by the corporations.”

In a gaudy, windowless private dining room hidden on the third floor of the Bagdad, Nader completed his dinner in a booth by the wall, his back to the entrance. He’d already lost a chance to talk in Eugene earlier in the day because of fouled-up airplane schedules.

“I’ve been fighting for 40 years for the health, safety and wellbeing of the people in this country,” said Nader, dressed as usual in nondescript gray, his modest countenance dour.

He decried the bailouts on Wall Street as “the most advanced deterioration of the federal government, which rushed through this with a stampede mentality, with no public meetings. It demonstrates corporate fascism at its most successful,” and he pointed the finger at both Sens. Obama and John McCain.

He said the government leaders failed to give authority to shareholders, to prosecute those who were guilty and to make speculators pay for their own bailout.

Nader claimed he intends to build a national movement to force Congress to make Wall Street accountable and to “control the orgy of speculation.”

Currently, he sees the populace as powerless and not focused or organized when it should have opposed the actions in Washington. “It’s another example of the two parties having the voters of America in prison,” he said.

Nader said debates should be open to third parties to “have a competitive democracy.” He said the media spends more time on Joe the Plumber than on discussions of single-pay Medicare health coverage, despite the fact that polls show the majority of Americans favor it and so do “doctors and hospitals.”

He said there isn’t enough discussion on a living wage, when one out of three Americans is earning “Wal-Mart wages.” He proposes $10 an hour minimum.

He urged a break from the two-party system and said he is campaigning in all 50 states. Voting for the lesser of two evils, for Obama instead of McCain, is not good enough for the American people, he said.

Nader has raised $4 million and has 1000 volunteers, 35 offices and a “vibrant Web site,” but has been shut out of national TV and radio news and the debates so that he cannot reach the masses, he said. He is now on the ballot in 45 states.

Asked why he continues to campaign when he has faced so many obstacles, Nader said, “the forces for injustice never take a vacation, so neither can the forces for justice. It would be an indulgence while the heart and soul are being torn out of America.”

Nader also decried the “vicious, profit-driven, indecent” commercialization of American children by television promoting junk food and drinks, soft porn and violent programming.

“There are no sufficient boundaries or tough law and order in our media,” he said, and that is why he will end his campaign talking at the Columbia University School of Journalism, where he will challenge the media for having fallen “into a trap, total madness. Reporters now jump on a gaffe or a tactic.”

Said the perennial candidate, “We’re sweatin’ it out but we’ll never give up.”