Klein: You know what? I don’t think this is about whether or not you vote for Obama. This is about whether we understand the game. Okay? That’s the game he’s playing. And we also know that he’s vulnerable to political pressure. And we need to make Rubin and Furman and Summers political liabilities for him. We need to take him at his word. If he really wants to put this ideology on trial, then that includes people within the Democratic Party who created this disaster. I mean, so many of the policies that really directly created this disaster were introduced in the late '90s under Clinton. Okay? And it really doesn’t serve anybody to see this through a partisan lens. It was the killing of Glass-Steagall that put up a firewall between investment banks and consumer banks and it was the decision not to regulate derivatives. And those things happened in ’99.
Kall: Now, we’ve got about ten minutes left based on the time frame you’ve given me, and there’s two things I want to talk about yet. One, I call the show “The Bottom Up Show” because bottom up is the future of government, of Democracy, of elections. In the last couple weeks Bill Clinton and Obama have mentioned it. Could you kind of plug in some of your ideas into the bottom-up versus top-down way of looking at things? And then the other thing I want to talk about is McCain and how he’ll approach this.
Klein: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is why I say it’s not about how you vote for or who you trust. It’s about being a political adult and realizing that political change isn’t handed down from above; it’s demanded from below. And if we don’t, you know, what I’ve been saying to people is, look, you know, Obama’s a centrist. He’s never lied about this. This is who he is through and through. He will find the center of wherever that debate is. But, the good part about Obama is that if the center moves, he’ll move with it, and we’ve seen that during this economic crisis. Right? Where the center has moved, the base has gotten more and more radical, more and more angry at Wall Street, and Obama has reflected that anger back to people. Right? So, what I’ve been saying to people is, if you don’t like where Obama is, move the center. Move the center. Go out there and say some really radical things and fight for them and organize.
Move the center, because that’s how America got The New Deal. Not because FDR handed it down from above, but because people were organizing in trade unions, in neighborhood groups. They were preventing their neighbors from being evicted from their homes by moving their furniture back into their homes. That’s how things like rent control were won. That’s why Fannie Mae was created in the first place-to prevent foreclosures.
That’s how Social Security was won. It was in that interplay between a very, very mobilized, radicalized base and a politician who was willing to listen. And, but more importantly, FDR was able to sell The New Deal as a compromise. Because people were so radical that he was able to say to the elite, look, we’re on the verge of revolution, we’re on the verge of Socialism. We need to give them something.
And The New Deal, as we know, wasn’t just one policy; they had to deepen it and sweeten the pot, more and more because people were so radical. That’s the kind of spirit that we need to return to. So it isn’t about bashing Obama, or, you know, complaining about Obama, you know, or distrusting Obama. It’s about seeing that credible threat from both below.
Kall: So what do we need to ask for that they can compromise to? In other words, we…
Klein: Well, personally I’m asking…
Kall: In other words, we…
Klein …personally, ah, you know, you just heard me call for the full nationalization of the banks. I’ve also been calling for the nationalization of Exxon. You know, when people say, you know, we won’t be able to afford the green energy plan, you know the biggest corporate criminals are not the banks, they’re the oil and gas companies. They’ve externalized their risk, which is climate change, and they’ve, you know, you’ve got a company like Exxon, which earns earned $40 Billion dollars in profits alone last year. I don’t accept the fact that while oil companies are earning that level of profit, that we’re going to be told that we can’t afford the investments in alternative energy and regulation that are necessary to address the most pressing crisis of our time.
So, you know, I’m going-- I’ve said this on National Television and I’m going to keep saying it and I think that that creates a space for a pretty deep windfall profit tax on the oil companies and, you know, it puts the discussion, I think in the direction where it should be.
But, you know, I think that there’s a feeling, there’s often a feeling, on the left in the United States where people are told that they’re a liability if they take too radical a position and there’s always this idea that you just sort of support the candidate until after the election, but then after the election the candidate’s going to be under a huge amount of attack from the right, so you have to support them against that.
So then there’s really never a moment of intellectual honesty. And I think this is, you know, I think this is a real test. I wish MoveOn would use their incredible network to say, you know, “We don’t want Bob Rubin.” And really stand up for homeowners. And, you know, the networks are there, but there’s a real unwillingness to take these risks.
Kall: Well, what else can we do? We can privatize Exxon, what else? What other ideas…
Klein: Nationalize Exxon.
Kall: Nationalize, yes. What else can activists do, what else can the grassroots start doing now, immediately, to help move the Congress, move Obama to a better place that’s going to prevent the disaster capitalism from running rampant over us?
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