Was Ralph Nader right about (almost) everything? His challenge to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections

Ralph Nader listens during a news conference on 2 July 2012 at Public Citizen in Washington DC. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenRalph Nader listens during a news conference on 2 July 2012 at Public Citizen in Washington DC. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesConsumedRalph NaderInterviewWas Ralph Nader right about (almost) everything? His challenge to Democrats ahead of the midterm electionsHeather Timmons in Washington‘Really change things for the working class,’ the ex-presidential candidate says

A corporate plutocracy. A broken healthcare system. Massive and widening inequality. Cash-soaked elections. Angry people struggling to pay their bills and disgusted with lawmakers in Washington DC.

Nearly everything that pushed famed consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader to launch the 2000 presidential run that made him a political pariah in Washington is front and center as the US gears up for the 2026 midterm elections. But this time, things are much, much worse.

Nader, now 92, has been seething from his home in northwest Washington as the Trump administration rips the guts out of the hard-fought consumer and safety protections he built in the 1960s and 1970s. He’s once again calling for a revolution in a Democratic party that still wants nothing to do with him.

“The best thing that could happen for the Democrats is for [Senator Chuck] Schumer and [Hakeem] Jeffries to be voted out in January,” Nader told the Guardian during one of several long phone calls, speaking of the Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress.

If Democrats win next week, they need to be bold to fix the country, Nader said: prosecute corruption, restore the federal agencies that have been destroyed, and really change things for the working class. He doubts Schumer and Jeffries will do it.

“You think they’re going to have that kind of energy and courage?” Nader said. “They have no stomach for that. They’re going to drag the Democratic party down. People want justice.”

As Democrats and their allies seek to defeat Trumpism and restore the US’s teetering democracy, it would be easy to dismiss Nader as a tragic footnote amid the current chaos: the man, although he and his allies vehemently disagree, whose run as a Green party presidential candidate cost Al Gore the presidency and left George W Bush in control.

View image in fullscreenRalph Nader addresses supporters as his mother Rose Nader looks on after his arrival at the National Press Club in Washington DC on 7 November 2000. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/APBut the ideas he’s preached for decades, rooted in the New Deal ideals that built the US into an economic powerhouse, are front and center in the midterms and beyond, after a failure to address the woes of working-class Americans opened the door to Trumpism.

For Nader, and many others, the central question is: does anyone in US politics have the fight to fix what’s wrong?

A series of progressive wins in the Democratic primaries and a flood of cash to Republicans has put everything on the table, from taxing billionaires to raising minimum wage to ‘Medicare for all’ to campaign finance reform. Even the left’s most moderating voices and a few Republicans agree it’s time to rein in the power and influence of big business.

Democrats “believe in regulated capitalism, and that we have overdone the capitalism and underdone the regulation”, said Matt Bennett, whose Third Way thinktank pushes moderate ideas. “The fact that we have a trillionaire who is trying to control American politics is pretty good evidence of that,” he added, speaking of Elon Musk’s Republican donations – now over $442m for the midterm elections.