McCarthy: Well, I think a lot of the things Ralph has said point in the right direction: start at the local level, start with specific issues. Don't try to form a grand ideological coalition. Discover the common ground that already exists, especially at the most practical levels.
The other thing is that you've got to cease being afraid of the other side. You've got to actually meet these people and realize, OK, I may disagree with them, they may be wrong about some things, but these are people of goodwill who are capable of being reasoned with.
Once people start talking with one another, they educate and inspire one another, and move to even higher levels of convergence.
I think that it's very easy for us all to kind of reflexively fall back on, well, the NRA is the source of evil, or the EPA is the source of evil, when in fact, what we need to ask is, what do the American people want? And then, what do our principles tell us ought to be pursued?
Nader: You know, the auto safety legislation that I proposed in 1966 passed the House of Representatives either unanimously or with one dissenting vote. We got the Freedom of Information Act through Congress with left-right support. We got the False Claims Act in 1986, which has saved tens of billions of dollars because it gives whistleblowers the right to join with the Justice Department going after corporate fraud, for example, on Medicare or on defense contracts. There are a lot of examples where it's already happened.
I think the most important thing is to put on the table the following: We're going to continue to disagree on reproductive rights, school prayer, and a constitutionally required balanced budget. But here are the areas we agree on.
The question is, do you want to win in these areas: an audit of the Pentagon, a pullback on the empire, de-bloating the military budget. ... Yes? Well, we're not winning. The left is not winning and neither is the right winning. But together, they present what I consider an unstoppable majority.
I don't see any other political realignment coming along. You can't win by just being a Republican or a Democrat. They're too indentured to commercial and other interests. They're too stuck in their own careerism--in being re-elected. They're too close to the military-industrial complex. So the only way I see a political realignment here is in the left-right.
McCarthy: I would say that both left and right have to be willing to be as critical of the people on their own side who abandoned principle as they are of people on the other side who have opposite principles.
So, to give one example, are conservatives serious about federalism? And if that's the case, they should be asking why Republicans in Congress are trying to overrule the people of Washington, D.C., on marijuana policy.
And on the left, there have been far less intense protests about Obama's wars and drone policies than we saw during the Bush years.
Each side, the left and the right, is willing to let its own unfaithful allies get away with murder.
Politics has become fighting for the sake of fighting for at least 30 years, and I think the results speak for themselves. Whether it's foreign policy, whether it's the economy--the country is in bad shape and it could get a lot worse. Both left and right are failing to achieve their own objectives with a strategy of conflict.
If that's the case, then why are we continuing with this whole kabuki act? Why are we still having the same conflicts, using the same ritual language to denounce the other side, restating our own terms and our own principles in absolute terms that people who don't buy into them can't possibly work with? We have to look at a new kind of strategy. Ralph's convergence idea is at least a starting point.
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