Crashing the Party
Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Ralph Nader is one of America's most passionate and effective social critics. He has been called a muckraker, a consumer crusader, and America's public defender. The cars we drive, the food we eat, the water we drink-their safety has been enhanced largely due to Ralph Nader. His inspiration and example have rallied consumer advocates, citizen activists, public interest lawyers, and government officials into action, and in the 2000 election, nearly three million people voted for him.
An inspiring and defiant memoir, Crashing the Party takes us inside Nader's campaign and explains what it took to fight the two-party juggernaut; why Bush and Gore were really afraid to let him in on their debates; why progressive Democrats have been left behind and ignored by their party; how Democrat and Republican interests have been lost to corporate bankrolling; and what needs to happen in the future for people to take back their political system.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This jaunty, provocative and entertaining on-the-road memoir/manifesto maps out Nader's political philosophy and provides the Nader take on the contemporary U.S. political scene. Whether it is what he sees as the corruption of the national media "I can't overemphasize the influence of The New York Times and Washington Post in setting the scene for the rest of the media" or the need to resuscitate the town meeting as he did repeatedly during his campaign tour, Nader presents a strong case that national politics is run more by money than issues and that there is a "democracy gap" that "discourages people from shaping the future for our country." Like a plucky protagonist in a Frank Capra film, Nader insists on speaking up for the little people and backs his arguments and decent sentiments with hard facts: an appendix of stats on affordable housing needs, "corporate welfare," personal bankruptcies, uneven distribution of wealth and the current minimum wage (which, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was in 1979) is an impressive indictment of the state of the national economy. Holding up last November's squalid election bickering as the end result of a fatigued system "To tell you the truth, I think they never really liked either one of them," he quotes Gore's own campaign manager as saying Nader, ever optimistic, ends his book with a pragmatic 10-point "First Stage Goals for a Better America."
