Ralph Nader: Obama Criticism Is Overdue

Ralph Nader: Obama Criticism Is Overdue

The left's anger over the public option and the anti-Obama revolt is long overdue, says Ralph Nader. Benjamin Sarlin talks to the self-professed "pioneer" of the current progressive rage.

Democrats are steaming over the White House's capitulation to liberal nemesis Joe Lieberman's demands to remove a public option and Medicare buy-in from the Senate's heath-care bill. Progressive figures including Howard Dean and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas have gone so far as to suggest scrapping the bill entirely and starting over, sparking rebukes from White House officials like David Axelrod, who called such a move "insane" in a Morning Joe interview on MSNBC on Thursday. With polls already showing many Democrats planning on sitting out 2010 midterms, the conflict has drawn comparisons to Ralph Nader's third-party run in 2000, which many Democrats blame for tipping the election to George W. Bush--and for leaving Lieberman to wreak havoc in the Senate.

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