Nader's Concession Speech: Next Steps
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
-- Yogi Berra
In this case, at the end of the road that is the presidential election, we do actually come to a fork. It's called Congress -- the House and the Senate. And we should follow Mr. Berra's famous advice and take that fork.
Whomever President-elect Obama chooses for his various cabinet posts, chief of staff, and so on, he is now pretty much out of reach of the American people. To sway a vote to Nader/Gonzalez, one could speculate on Obama's potential appointees, given his campaign contributors, and the thick phalanx of former Clinton advisers and hawkish military types around him. Now is the time to rapidly shift the focus to Congress.
Bringing our efforts to bear on Congress is the only way we can achieve a single-payer system of health care, a living wage comparable to that at the end of the 1960s -- $10 -- and a less belligerent foreign policy. In each Congressional district we need to start organizing ourselves -- and quickly. Ralph Nader showed how much could be done in just a single day in Massachusetts with the marathon he did there of 21 campaign stops in 24 hours. And that was done with the tough goal of trying to convince voters to support his candidacy, which was overwhelmingly ignored by the news media.
Imagine a campaign for results that a majority of Americans already support before you start campaigning! We figure that it will take about 60 days to solidify this new effort.
But, clearly, it won't be easy, and we don't want to underestimate the task. Here's the thing: with your generous donations to the Nader/Gonzalez campaign, you helped us design systems of organizing (that's how you get on 45 state ballots) that lend themselves perfectly toward the idea of organizing around Congress to pass the major laws that we want, laws that respond to people's needs.
Though some of us are now involved with the new effort at November5.org, it's not part of the Nader/Gonzalez campaign. Please visit that website and sign up today. Let your friends and family know about it. We're all shifting direction, and the faster we go about it the better.
Regrouping Fast to Continue Onward,
The Nader Team