Ralph Nader: Obama Needs to Stand With Progressives; ‘He’s Got to Learn How to Fight’

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: As President Obama takes fire from his left on health care, Ralph Nader said today that the president’s push is foundering because Obama hasn’t learned to stand strong with his progressive allies.

“The minute either the Blue Dog Democrats or people like Senator [Max] Baucus — a Republican in Democratic clothing — see any kind of ambiguity, any kind of weakness . . . anytime they see that, they eat him alive,” Nader, the veteran consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate, told us today on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.”

“And he’s got to learn how to fight, how to draw clear lines, and how to go to his progressive base,” Nader said. “He’s never invited progressive leaders to the White House, and they represent a huge constituency that elected him. But he invites CEOs to the White House, of health insurance companies and drug companies. You don’t win that way.”

Nader, who has long advocated for a single-payer health care system, said Obama is suffering because of the complexity of his proposals.

“No matter what the medium is — you can have massive TV coverage, if your message is too complex, it’s too abstract and you’re not standing with a veto threat you know, to really shape the Congress the way LBJ would, it’s not going to get across,” Nader said.

Single-payer health care is one theme of Nader’s new book, his first work of fiction: “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” The book, which Nader is calling a work of “political science fiction,” publishes tomorrow.

The book imagines 17 ultra-rich, liberal-leaning individuals — George Soros, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, Yoko Ono, Bill Cosby, and William Gates Sr. among them — gathering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to launch a new political movement.

“Although it’s a big book, every step of the way the reader can say, ‘You know, this could happen.’ Why? Because 17 super-rich older and enlightened Americans decide that they’re going to make it happen,” Nader told us. “And they meet in Maui in a hotel on top of a mountain in January 2006, and they plan the strategy. It’s a smart strategy, it’s . . . bottom up. It mobilizes people in their various roles as consumers, taxpayers, workers, and voters. And they really pour the money in.”

Click HERE to see the full interview with Ralph Nader.

We also checked in with Time’s Karen Tumulty, who talked about some changes that are likely to be made to the Baucus health care bill, and summed up negotiations with Republicans: “I think that from here on out, whatever Olympia wants, Olympia gets,” Tumulty said, referring to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

Watch the discussion with Karen Tumulty HERE.

On Health Care, Dems Learn to Speak Softly, Carry Big Stick

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Ferdous Al-Faruque report:

<img src=”http://plsdontcallme.info/wp3/wp-content/uploads/on-health-care-dems-learn-tobr-speak-softly-carry-big-stick-1.jpg&#8221; alt=”On Health Care, Dems Learn to
Speak Softly, Carry Big Stick” title=”On Health Care, Dems Learn to
Speak Softly, Carry Big Stick” />

 

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., discussed health care reform at the Center for American Progress on March 27, in Washington, D.C.
Ferdous Al-Faruque/ ABC News 

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt., the powerful chairman of the Finance Committee who is taking the lead on reforming the nation’s health-care system, told the liberal Center for American Progress on Friday that circumventing Republicans on this issue “would not be a good idea”.

He — and several other Democrats — are not, however, ruling out the possibility of bypassing GOP senators through the budget reconciliation process if a deal is not reached by the end of the summer. Reconciliation allows legislation to pass the 100-member Senate with a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes.

The threat of the budget reconciliation process is an important “club” for Democrats to wield, said Norm Ornstein, an expert on Congress from the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

It gives the party in power leverage over Republicans and the insurance industry that they otherwise would not have.

“We are not at a point yet where the Republican Party wants to be a partner in making major legislation and that’s where reconciliation issue comes back,” said Ornstein. “Whether the administration can artfully use a club over people’s heads, not to use it, but to say . . . to Republicans: ‘we have got an option here and we can freeze you out and do it with 50 votes.'”

“And if you don’t use it, and don’t threaten in a way that alienates everybody, it’s another reason to be hopeful that we can actually get this thing done,” he added.

Ornstein made his comments at the Center for American Progress during a panel discussion which followed the Baucus speech. He was joined on the panel by former Clinton adviser Paul Begala and Time Magazine writer Karen Tumulty. The discussion was moderated by Judy Feder, a fellow with the Center for American Progress who teaches at Georgetown University.

Read the Baucus remarks as prepared for delivery here.