It’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in low regard for decades now: the marginally more palatable alternative in an ugly duopoly, he claims, is still quite ugly. But lately Nader’s disdain has reached a new high. “It’s gotten so bad,” he tells me, “that you can actually say a Republican president—with a Democratic Senate—would produce less bad results than the present situation. That’s how bollixed stuff has gone” …

Yet he says there is one candidate who sticks out—who even gives him hope: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

That might sound counterintuitive. Nader, of course, is known as a stalwart of the independent left, having first gained notoriety for his 1960s campaign to impose greater regulatory requirements on automakers—a policy act that would seem to contravene the libertarian understanding of justified governmental power. So I had to ask: how could he profess hope in Ron Paul, who almost certainly would have opposed the very regulations on which Nader built his career?

“Look at the latitude,” Nader says, referring to the potential for cooperation between libertarians and the left. “Military budget, foreign wars, empire, Patriot Act, corporate welfare—for starters. When you add those all up, that’s a foundational convergence. Progressives should do so good.”

I attended the Teach-in on the #Occupy Movement at Brown last week where Professor Corey Walker posed the central questions as this, “How shall we live… How shall we live in community?” Perhaps the left/libertarian answers aren’t so different?

Worried the liberal voice is being drowned out in the presidential campaign, progressive leaders said Monday they want to field a slate of candidates against President Obama in the Democratic primaries to make him stake out liberal stances as he seeks re-election…

“What we are looking at now is the dullest presidential campaign since Walter Mondale — and that’s saying something, believe me,” [Ralph] Nader told The Washington Times.

Little surprise that party insiders have already started the “most important election ever” scare tactics to keep progressives in line and presumably content with whatever bones the administration throws to them (“Do they want to return to the disastrous economic and social policies advocated by the tea party and the Republican presidential candidates today?”).

Yes, progressives, don’t ask for anything, or you’ll be sorry. You’ll get “centrist,” corporatist, empire-lite and like it! Nader explains:

The very nature of the slate would not be to defeat him. It is to press him to publicly pay attention to the fundamental principles and agendas that represent the modest soul of the Democratic party, before corporate money became so dominant in its campaign treasuries some 30 years ago.

The Republican base expects their candidates to actually represent their values and represent them with more than rhetoric. We could learn a thing or two. If not, don’t feel betrayed when you get what you asked for.

“He’s got a lack of enthusiasm with his base,” Nader continued. “If he goes through a one-year presidential campaign with mind-numbing repetition, responding to crazed Republican positions, he is not going to activate his base. He will be put on the defensive, just the way he is now.”

Mr. Nader, a Democratic primary in Rhode Island? Yes, we can!