In an interview for MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” on Monday, Ralph Nader urged progressive Democrats to break ranks and challenge Hillary Clinton in the upcoming presidential race of 2016—lamenting that the former Secretary of State is once again emerging as the “inevitable” candidate because the left in the country has lost its “movement sensibilities.”
“Somebody must challenge from the left, because, I mean, Hillary Clinton, who started out as a progressive out of Yale Law School and Wellesley, she’s become almost the poster child for the military-industrial complex,” Nader stated.
“She hugs Kissinger. She hobnobs with Bob Rubin and the Wall Street crowd,” Nader told host Chuck Todd. “I mean it’s almost a caricature. But you know on social issues, like pro-choice, children’s issues, you know she keeps that liberal sheen.”
Nader warned that elected officials on the left have lost their bargaining power because they have failed to challenge establishment Democrat practices.
“The problem with progressives in the Democratic Party is—they’re hanging on. There is Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders—but they’re fairly marginalized. They’re not in the center because they don’t threaten to break. The right wing does threaten to break sometimes,” Nader explained.
More progressive members of Congress and more liberally-minded Democrats, said Nader, “are very skittish about challenging the dominant players in their party.”
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