Friday, December 5, 2008

Ralph Nader and Medea Benjamin on Obama’s Cabinet and Grassroots Organizing Under the Next Administration

Ralph Nader and Medea Benjamin on Obama’s Cabinet and Grassroots Organizing Under the Next Administration on DemocracyNow.org

I added an RSS feed from Democracy Now at the top. So that's the links to their recent stories. I had that on my other site and liked it, so its on this one now.

This is one of the stories I saw on today's list.

[Amy Goodman] ... I want to talk with both of you about the cabinet picks. Juan and I have some questions, starting with Ralph Nader. Just go through the cabinet picks—again, they have to be approved—of Barack Obama, your, well, former opponent. You ran for president, as well, Ralph Nader.


RALPH NADER: Well, it’s symbolized in an article in the newspapers a day or two ago. The headline was “Obama Turns to Consider Liberals for Cabinet Positions.” I mean, you know, after appointing all the heavyweights, keeping Gates as Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton at State Department, and other positions—Treasury, for example, coming from Wall Street—the article said, well, it’s time now to consider some liberal appointees.


Well, what’s left? Department of Labor. Now, will David Bonior, who is a genuine progressive and spent many years in the House of Representatives from Michigan, get the job? That remains to be seen.


It’s really interesting. As long as liberals and progressives gave Obama a pass during the election and didn’t demand anything in return, he knew that he had their votes and he had their support regardless and moved right, moved to the corporate. And that’s reflected in the appointments that he has been putting in place.


The link goes to the rush transcript of the interview. Also from there you could listen to the audio or watch the video.

5 comments:

KDelphi said...

Thank you , samson

Lyle said...

Pinky Piggies http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2008/12/pink-geishas.html

Anonymous said...

Medea Benjamin supported Obama over Nader. Why is she allowed to keep ruining Code Pink?

Samson said...

To me, that's the general problem with most of these opposition groups. The leadership isn't chosen by any democratic means, and there never seems to be any accountability.

In general, the leadership of most of the anti-war organization has been very bad. In a country where 70% of the people support their position, they manage to be very weak and powerless.

There's more to that than just bad leadership of course. Its also a sign of a failure of democracy around here.

But, if the people who oppose the war decide they want different leadership, how would they go about it? Its not like these organizations hold elections.

Samson said...

The link Lyle put in is great, and I'd highly recommend following it.

This is what's always disturbed me about the Democrats. They act like they have time to play their little games. They act like they are free to be awful today with just the promise to be better tommorow.

This looks a little different from the war zone.