From The Raw Story :

In an extended interview with Middle East news network Al Jazeera, consumer advocate and repeat U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader suggested that President Barack Obama is not supporting the labor movement because “they have nowhere else to go” except for Democrats. “If he doesn’t stand up for those millions of workers, we might as well call him a president in a corporate prison called the White House,” Nader said, likening Obama’s “playing” of labor unions to the stretching of an elastic band. But this time, Nader said, the band may be just about ready to “snap.” Should that happen, it could kick-start a “popular revolt” in the U.S., he added.

Nader looks gnarly as an olive tree, but his mind is still sharp. I detested him for years after his candidacy played a role in Bush’s victory over Gore in 2000. (Except that Bush actually lost the election and was appointed by allies on the Supreme Court, but that’s another story.) What a vile egomaniac, playing the spoiler’s role in so important a race!

I’m still mad at Nader, but his complaint that Democrats and Republicans are nourished by the same rivers of money and are therefore more alike than unalike rings even truer now than then. He’s the person least likely to be surprised by Obama’s failure to aggressively support labor unions, or by the fact that the independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and a few maverick Dem legislators have had to take the lead in seriously proposing higher taxes on the rich.

Nader’s notion that there might be a popular revolt brewing sounds like a pipe dream, but who would have though a few months back that Madison, WI, would become a hotbed of workers’ protests? Check out the March 21 Al Jazeera video on The Raw Story and see for yourself how much sense Nader makes.