Ralph Nader Hour - Sunday, May 31, 2026

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1. This is Ben
2. Cohen, the ice cream guy, and you're listening to my hero, Ralph Nader, the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
3. Stand up, stand up, you've been sitting way too long.
4. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrove and along with my co-host,
5. David Feldman. Hello, David. Hello, Steve. And of course, as always, our producer,
6. our Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah. Hello, Steve. And it's not a Ralph Nader Radio Hour without the
7. man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph. Hello, everybody. We have a great program today.
8. The 30th convention of the AFL-CIO is set for June 7th to the 10th in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
9. The AFL-CIO represents about two-thirds of the U.S. organized workforce, and according to our
10. first guest, Chris Townsend. Very few active union members even know this convention is happening.
11. What does this say about the AFL-CIO's relevance to working Americans? Chris Townsend has been a
12. union member and a labor leader for nearly 50 years. We'll speak to him about the decline of
13. the labor movement and what needs to be done to revive it. In the second half of the show,
14. we jump back into the gerrymandering wars. For this, we turn to Lee Drutman, senior fellow in
15. the political reform program at New America, where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress,
16. and democratic health. Redistricting is a hot topic right now. Following the Supreme Court's
17. recent decision in Louisiana versus Calais, state legislatures across the country are pitching new
18. electoral maps, and several primary races have been thrown into chaos. Critics of this wave of
19. partisan redistricting have called it an, quote, existential crisis. But Lee Drummond argues that
20. gerrymandering is as American as apple pie and drone attacks.
21. We'll speak to him about the myth of fair electoral districts,
22. the voting system we actually live with,
23. and the potential of proportional representation.
24. And to close out the show, Ralph has a number of news items
25. he'd like to draw your attention to.
26. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our intrepid
27. corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
28. But first, what's going on with the union movement
29. and what can be done to revive it?
30. Anna?
31. Chris Townsend has been a union member and labor leader for more than 45 years.
32. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union International Union Organizing Director.
33. Previously, he was an international representative and political action director for the United Electrical Workers Union,
34. and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.
35. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Chris Townsend.
36. Thank you.
37. Listeners should know you're going to get a narrative that almost never comes over radio and TV in the USA
38. on the state of organized labor, unorganized labor, and what needs to be done about it from Chris Townsend.
39. I grew up, Chris, at the peak of the labor movement.
40. At the peak, it had 34% of all workers were in unions.
41. There was a national radio program paid for and run by unions called the Voice of Labor that had a program every week with huge people a volume of listeners It was a go program at that time The unions all had print newspapers
42. They had a lot of pictures of the heads of the union, like the coal miners union, but they at
43. least had a communication mechanism. And some of the better unions, like United Electrical Workers,
44. used it for education, mobilization, raising expectation levels and demands by the rank and
45. file. Now we're going to get into the dismal state of organized labor. I mentioned they reached a
46. peak of over 33%, and now they're down to 10%. Only one out of 10 workers in America belongs
47. to a union. The majority of those union workers are represented by the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO on
48. 16th Street, the headquarters, just a couple of football field distances from the White House,
49. has become a tail, T-A-I-L, of the Democratic Party. I know that from experience. We tried
50. successfully to get them to back a real invigorated Labor Day a couple of years ago,
51. were focused on workers, events, connection with citizen groups all over the country,
52. focused on a compact for the American workers, really exciting. But as is their practice,
53. they passed it by the Democratic National Committee, which said no, they couldn't control
54. what would be said at these local meetings on Labor Day around the country. So that was another
55. bit of evidence that this is not an independent labor movement. Now, you have hammered that home
56. again and again, and you had an article in April, and it was called, if the AFL-CIO had a convention,
57. would anybody notice? Well, they are having their every three-year convention in Minneapolis,
58. June 7th to June 10th. What do you think is going to happen and not happen?
59. Yeah, the AFL-CIO convention in Minneapolis is almost upon us. I conducted the start of my article, Ralph, was I conducted a straw poll of my own. And at the time I wrote the article, I had spoken to 30 people. By now, I've spoken to more than twice that many.
60. And virtually nobody even knows that there's a convention coming. And that didn't surprise me, really, because there's been no advertising. There's no nothing remarkable happening. There's no plans being promulgated, at least that I can discover.
61. And this is part and parcel of the existing Federation leadership. And recall, for listeners, the existing leadership of the AFL-CIO beyond Liz Shuler and Fred Redmond and the actual staff is really consists of the heads of the larger unions and a few smaller in the Federation Executive Council itself.
62. The AFL does represent probably 65% of all unionized workers in the United States.
63. And in any case, you know, this convention is deliberately kept secret.
64. It's what I describe as sort of a hideout strategy.
65. It enables the leadership to not have to discuss or take positions that for them are difficult,
66. such as what is the labor movement going to do to confront the rampant lawlessness and
67. criminality of the Trump regime?
68. What is the labor movement going to do to address the rampaging inflation that is eating up living standards?
69. There's no wage policy. There's no bargaining policy of the Federation.
70. What are they going to do to address the ongoing national health care crisis and disaster, which is far from being solved?
71. Obamacare you know at best a Band And what are they doing about the crisis of unorganized As you point out the density of union membership continues to sink And I think that this gathering comes and the very distinct impression that I given as a close observer for decades now is that the leadership wants to sort of convene it hurry it up and get out of town and move on
72. And this is what I refer to as the hideout strategy. It's like they want to wait for Trump to go by and attack somebody else or big business.
73. Well, it could be an occasion for throwing down the gauntlet to the war criminal and domestic criminal Donald Trump, corrupt abuser of labor, anti-worker, broke the contracts between the federal government and the government employees union in the first weeks of his regime last year.
74. And he's an abuser of women. He's a liar, a thief, a crook, the most corrupt presidency in American history, hands down, giving out contracts in return for this and cutting deals in cryptocurrency and enriching his family and himself.
75. So this is a perfect opportunity.
76. He's, like the Democrats before him, frozen the federal minimum wage at $7.25.
77. Over the years, the AFL-CIO has been for a higher minimum wage, but no muscle, even when the Democrats controlled Congress.
78. No muscle to get it through.
79. It's been frozen since 2009.
80. 2009, $7.25 an hour.
81. Imagine.
82. Some states have bypassed and raised it, like California and Connecticut, etc.
83. But by and large, I don't know any progressive issue that the FLCIO is not really authentically and to the limit pushing for.
84. They certainly aren't pushing to reverse the notorious anti-labor law, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1946,
85. the most anti-union law in the entire Western world.
86. Tell our listeners about that one.
87. Yeah, the Taft-Hartley Act.
88. Well, first of all, Ralph, you'd be spot on with your analysis of what the AFL is not
89. doing.
90. And again, that dovetails with what I describe as the hideout strategy, you know, to have
91. that convention with as little fanfare as possible and skedaddle.
92. But in terms of the issues and Taft-Hartley, it remains a linchpin of the assault on organized
93. labor.
94. It's the origination point of the so-called right to work laws that permeate more than
95. half of our states.
96. It's also it provides, you know, incredible flexibility by whatever administration to involve itself and stop strikes.
97. It limits what we can do with strikes. It has tremendous impact on our ability to organize.
98. And this is the linchpin. I mean, the labor movement finds itself, I would submit, with a leadership disinterested in going out and organizing the unorganized.
99. But even for those who do, and there are some, the laws, Taft-Hartley primary among them, provides such a minefield that we have to run through that our ability to organize on any scale for decades has been stopped.
100. And therefore, we are condemned to sort of a perpetual shrinking size, resources and whatnot.
101. And it's actually dovetail for listeners. An awful lot might help for folks to figure out how or why this is happening is that the labor movement is systematically being converted from trade union fighting organizations, membership driven fighting organizations to harmless not for profit organizations.
102. And this is sort of today administrative layer of trade union leader that don see anything wrong with that But that doesn help anyone in the shop in the office in the workplace and it doesn help anyone looking to the labor movement for something better better treatment better wages better benefits better conditions better health and safety in the workplace It does nothing on that front
103. Well, you're right.
104. 70 years, this has been going on for a long time, this decline, quote, 70 years of drift, decline, membership loss, destruction of most accepted union standards in the industries, and loss of most loyalty from or influence among the broad masses of working people, end quote.
105. Now, there are some bright lights. There are some efforts to organize Amazon warehouses and Starbucks stores around the country. The polls show that unions have a favorability rating of almost 65% of the people. That's at a high point.
106. And a lot of white-collar workers, including healthcare, big hospital employees, are supporting efforts.
107. But still, overall, the number of union members has been declining.
108. And, of course, with the onset of Silicon Valley, vigorously anti-union, and the spread of AI, which carries forth the anti-union displacement dogma on steroids, it doesn't look good in terms of the future.
109. So what do you think should be done here? Are you in favor of launching it with a massive picketing of the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington by workers?
110. Well, I'm going to answer your question.
111. You raise very key points, Ralph, and I'll answer with a bit of an anecdote, which I
112. think illustrates all of the problem, which is listeners wouldn't know this, but I played
113. a key role in the launch of the Starbucks organizing, which is a long story.
114. Otherwise, I started an organizing school when I was at ATU and we were the incubator,
115. so to speak, for that thing.
116. Richard Bensinger, a legendary organizer, was the key technician of that campaign.
117. And a young woman, Jazz Brissac, was the lead barista in that.
118. And that's become a historic.
119. If it ended today, the Starbucks organizing has exceeded the wildest second place in terms
120. of its reach, not necessarily in the total number of workers, but in its geographic range,
121. over 700 stores having won NLRB elections.
122. Well, that being said, I have contacted and spoken to high level people in organizing
123. departments and international and national union presidents over five years now, offering
124. to explain to them how it is this small group of people moved what turned into this fantastic,
125. successful campaign, successful in the sense that we launched it and we got a contagion
126. effect amongst a very eager demographic of workers who want organization.
127. So I've made that plea. With the exception of my union, UE, not a single other union has agreed for me to provide a one-hour free Zoom briefing on how we did that, only with an eye towards them, first of all, learning more about it, and perhaps adopting or experimenting with some of the things that we did.
128. And one might think that this labor movement in its given decline would possess amongst
129. its leadership some degree of curiosity about some remarkable successful campaigns such
130. as Starbucks.
131. And my conclusion is there is next to no curiosity.
132. And I think today's condition of the labor movement and frankly, our almost negligible
133. new organizing proves that.
134. And I don't know how absent real pressure on some of these unions, how that can be remedied.
135. It's remarkable to me. I've never seen this.
136. Even in darker times, or equally dark times,
137. under Reagan and whatnot,
138. there were still amongst many of the unions
139. curiosity. They would look for ways to try something new, push forward, take a different
140. route. I don't see any of it today. Well, part of it is the union leaders are part of the
141. oligarchy or plutocracy themselves. Explain that. Well, yes. Folks who know me will know that I'm
142. prone to repeat what I'm going to say here, which is folks have to realize that the labor movement
143. in the United States is by world historical all-time standards, it's the most financially
144. wealthy labor movement in the history of the universe in terms of the business union model
145. that we have. It's very, very good, very, very keen at collecting dues, collecting savings,
146. shepherding them, buying buildings, having investments, many hundreds of billions of
147. dollars in the coffers of the various union. But of course, the spending priorities of what
148. these organizations are then going to do to spend that money. One of the primary things that they do
149. is inflate the salaries of the upper leadership. And I'll say it, we had a Rubicon crossed here
150. recently that even I thought was a little bit astonishing. And when Chris Townsend has an
151. astonished look on his face these days, that's something our electrician, Jim, in the IBEW,
152. for the first time, now pays its president over $1 million a year. We've seen salaries in the
153. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for high national and international
154. union leaders. Yes, we've seen that pathology for decades. I've never seen a million dollars
155. a year union president. And I don't know the exact circumstances, but I
156. bear that there's nobody doing electrical work out in the field who's making a million dollars a year.
157. Well, you belong to one of the most progressive, honest labor unions for years, United Electrical
158. workers, and they have a tradition where the head of the union doesn't make any more than the top
159. electrician makes in the rank and file. Yeah, correct. It's in the Constitution of UE. It
160. actually says that of the three titled officers, none can earn more than a member would earn out
161. in the field. Now, of course, UE is a very diverse union, seven different sectors of industrial
162. sectors represented by the UE membership. So today I'm going to venture a guess. I want to say that
163. the UE3 officers earn, I think it's about $75,000 a year. They work 100 hours a week. They no longer
164. have a pension. We had to give up the pension, couldn't afford the pension, thanks to all the
165. legislative attacks on pensions. So it's a very modest salary. They have a healthcare plan,
166. but it's no easy skate. And of course, they would have thousands of members in UE that earn more
167. in salary than the officers themselves. So that's the way it should be. And I'll say for folks that
168. that used to be a much more common happening, that you would have these unions realizing that
169. if you allowed your leadership salons to become so inflated, so remote and far away from where
170. your members were, it was a lot of things. It was not only going to be a political problem,
171. but it also is a problem in terms of internal democratic functioning. I mean, a worker,
172. an ordinary worker. I gave the IBEW example. Let's continue with that. That's Liz Shuler,
173. the head of the AFL-CIO. That's also her union, just for full attribution. But what is a rank
174. and file electrician to do out there if they decide they want to run for president when you're
175. running against a millionaire? Every year, this guy is again and again benighted as a millionaire
176. just with his salary. How are you going to mount a campaign if you make $80,000? Maybe you hit
177. 100 I mean it undemocratic on its face just as far as that goes I want to read you a quote Quote the evidence shows that the collapse of the organized labor
178. movement is not due to the existence of new problems which defy solution, such as hostile
179. legislation or automation, but because of certain inherent policies and weaknesses of the movement
180. itself, end quote. That was spoken in 1962, Chris Townsend, by the General Counsel of the United
181. Electrical Workers Union. 1962. Can you explain that in today's conditions and terms with NAFTA
182. and AI and all that? Yeah, UE has never been a member of the AFL. It was a CIO affiliate,
183. it, and then it was driven out during the incredible repression of the McCarthy period,
184. and has been an independent union ever since. But once the AFL-CIO came together, which any
185. sober observer would conclude quickly that it was a surrender of the formerly militant CIO elements
186. back to a very staid and conservative AFL, and I think the evidence is that, you know, the 70 plus
187. years of history since then has borne that out. Well, seven years into the existence of the AFL-CIO,
188. Frank Donner, a legendary general counsel of UE, kind of took stock for a speech at a UE convention
189. in 1962. I was one year old when that happened. And he said, let's examine this. Let's take UE,
190. a very thoughtful union, a very detailed union. Let's examine what the seven-year balance sheet
191. is. And it was already failed at that point, so far as being measured against its stated goals
192. of why it came together and was formed in 1955 in the first place. And I think you can continue that
193. legacy of failure and inaction all the way up to today. You mentioned AI and the trade policies,
194. Trump, all of these attacks falling on workers, not only through political channels, but every
195. day in the workplace. Because even if you're lucky enough to have a union, your employer
196. is spending a great deal of time and money trying to figure out how to get rid of you
197. and how to speed you up and how to chisel you in every imaginable way. So the AFL, it's just not
198. up to the task. It cannot even and will not even identify what the challenges are, let alone take
199. the time to deal with them. And I encourage folks as a way to prove this, don't take Chris Townsend
200. or Ralph Nader's view of this, go to the AFL-CIO website. I think it's aflcio.org. It'll come up
201. in any search that you do. You click on the little page they have for their convention,
202. and it will say convention agenda. And the convention agenda will come up,
203. and it's about 14 sentences long. There's no thoughtful debate going to happen here. There's
204. no discussion of any of these significant issues. It's a big staff meeting and a lot of social
205. Well, you know, Chris Townsend, before we continue, tell people how they can get your two articles, which are loaded with information.
206. Well, there's actually three now. One is in the newspaper that you're a big booster of, Ralph, the Capitol Hill Citizen. There's an article in there by me, this particular issue. I was very happy that you guys asked me to submit that article, and it kind of lays out some of this. And then some of it overlaps with the website that I write for regularly. I'm the labor commentary for a website, MarxismLeninismToday.
207. And if you put in Marxism-Leninism today, it will come up.
208. And I write monthly on some labor question.
209. I have something to say after the convention just to sort of tie up the loose ends But it a left wing I a left winger The labor movement we the real moving force frankly in most of the unions those that move at all
210. And I tabulate and chronicle some of these problems. The tragedy here of all this is,
211. amongst the labor unions, I find an immense reservoir of desire to fight back, to push back,
212. to be more intelligent in terms of how we select their fights, to certainly maintain political
213. independence from this Democratic Party, which has suffocated us. And on and on I could go.
214. But yet the leadership chooses to take the safe way out, which is to sort of cop out and,
215. you know, well, we can't do that. We better not do that. And then you end up with this truly
216. remarkable and contemptible moment in time where the leading, the only labor federation we have
217. in the United States, chooses at this moment in time to hide in the tall weeds as maybe they hope
218. Trump goes by and destroys someone else. Maybe we can live through this regime as if that's going
219. to happen, as if Trump is going to leave us alone, or look at these lunatics that are following in
220. Trump's footsteps as if those folks are going to somehow make their peace with us.
221. Let's cut to the chase here. Let's talk about union corruption, skeletons in their closet,
222. as a major reason why they're not taking on Trump.
223. Because if they start taking on Trump,
224. and you call it the Trumpzilla beast stomping by and stomping on the unions,
225. if they go after him, he will immediately instruct the Justice Department
226. to investigate them, to indict them.
227. He will turn the Labor Department even more into an antagonist,
228. dealing with union pensions.
229. There's a double standard there with the top union leaders having their own special pensions and paying huge fees to the Wall Street banks to invest.
230. And who knows what the retrospective commissions are like euphemistically.
231. There's a lot there.
232. And they're terrified, totally terrified.
233. I think that explains the bulk, and not all of it, but I think that explains the bulk of the passivity of the AFL-CIO and a lot of their member unions. Your response?
234. You're absolutely right. And it's also rooted in, yes, all of these union leaders take the helm at whatever point they get selected. Now, I say selected because if you examine the various unions, including the AFL-CIO as the federation of unions, the vast majority of the leadership for decades upon decades hasn't been authentically elected. It has been selected.
235. And in fact, coming out of this convention, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL, Fred Redmond, in his very advanced age, is likely at some point after the convention to retire.
236. And that will enable the Executive Council in secret to select whoever it is they want to replace him.
237. And this becomes one of the many devices, one of the many undemocratic devices that the incumbent leadership use, not only at the local level, but at the national and international level.
238. and of course, then in the Federation. So what gets selected is not the best and the brightest.
239. It's the maybe most well-connected, the most compliant, the most play ball. So we find
240. ourselves today with a leadership that is unfit, unfit to challenge what the mission calls for at
241. this point in time. And I think this convention, for me, when I started paying attention to it
242. six months ago, it has played out exactly along those lines.
243. This is an organization led in large measure by unfit elements who are disinterested not interested fearful even of launching you know the kinds of struggles that we must just for our survival
244. On that note, thank you very much, Chris Townsend, for your indefatigable optimism and drive.
245. Thank you again.
246. Thank you.
247. We've been speaking with Chris Townsend.
248. We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour.com.
249. When we come back, we'll dive back into the gerrymandering wars and what it means for
250. true democratic representation. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter,
251. Russell Mokhyber. From the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., this is your
252. Corporate Crime Reporter Morning Minute for Friday, May 22, 2026. I'm Russell Mokhyber.
253. Florida-based power company NextEra Energy announced that it plans to acquire Virginia's
254. Dominion Energy, citing the growth of AI data centers as the impetus for the move.
255. This absurd proposal to merge two massive, well-capitalized utilities should be dead on arrival for state and federal regulators, said public citizen Tyson Slocum.
256. Household customers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing two behemoths, NextEra and Dominion, to merge.
257. The claim that the tie-up is needed to address data center demand is a false narrative, Slocum said.
258. The merger will do nothing to increase generating capacity, let alone desperately needed renewable generating capacity.
259. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mokhar.
260. Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
261. I'm Steve Skrovan, along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph.
262. With the crucial 2026 midterms looming, blue states and red states have been doing what is called gerrymaxing.
263. Our next guest is going to tell us what that all means.
264. Hannah?
265. Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America,
266. where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress, and democratic health.
267. He writes the newsletter Under Current Events and co-hosts the podcast Politics in Question.
268. And he is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying and Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,
269. the case for multi-party democracy in America. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Lee Drutman.
270. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you all.
271. Welcome indeed. Lee, you immediately responded to the Supreme Court decision a few days ago that basically blew apart what's called the majority-minority black districts and completely somersaulted the voters and activated the red state governors and legislatures to, right in the middle of the 10-year period, break tradition and start passing laws redistricting.
272. so that the politicians can pick the voters even more extensively instead of the voters picking the politicians.
273. Can you describe what you have written, which is you have the solution to get rid of all this gerrymandering nonsense
274. and all the corruption and bigotry that is involved with it?
275. Yeah, well, it's actually surprisingly simple, which is we just move to a system of proportional representation and we'll get into what that means.
276. But the whole issue of gerrymandering is really just an outgrowth of this way that we use single winner districts with winner take all votes.
277. It's also what entrenches the two-party system in the U.S., which limits the choice of voters.
278. So there's this one weird voting mechanism that we have that most countries have gotten rid of that is an antiquated voting system.
279. that preserves the two-party system and makes gerrymandering just inevitable.
280. And that's the use of single-member districts.
281. Now, in a proportional system, you take away the districts and you do this statewide.
282. You can carve up larger states into a few multi-member districts.
283. And then seats get allocated proportionally by party share.
284. That takes away the entire incentive of gerrymandering.
285. It gives voters everywhere meaningful choices, meaningful votes.
286. And it is just a superior system of representing the pluralism and diversity of our pluralistic and diverse society.
287. Well, as you say, it also gets rid of this.
288. If you get 49 percent and your opponent gets 51 percent, you get nothing.
289. The opponent gets everything.
290. Proportional representation gives value to every vote.
291. Yes.
292. So explain how it would work in a state like Connecticut, small, I think five members of Congress, and a state like California or Texas that has dozens of members.
293. How would it work?
294. Well, let's start with Connecticut because it's an easier example.
295. Connecticut has five elected representatives.
296. All five are Democrats.
297. Now, Democrats are the majority party in the state, but it's not 100 percent Democratic.
298. but the way that data is carved up into five districts, Democrats are a majority in all
299. districts. I don't think any of those seats are two-party competitive at this point.
300. So voters don't really have a competitive election to vote in. Now, if you took away districts in
301. Connecticut and you just made it one statewide district and parties put forward lists, just say,
302. for example, we'll complicate this in a second, but for a simple example, Democrats put forward
303. a list of five candidates, they get 60% of the vote total. Republicans put forward a list of
304. five candidates, they get 40% of the vote total. So Democrats would get three seats,
305. their three most popular candidates, and Republicans would get two seats,
306. their two most popular candidates. Now, but practically, that also might mean that maybe
307. the Green Party could run in Connecticut, or maybe a progressive Democratic Party could run
308. in Connecticut. Yeah, maybe they wouldn't represent the entire state, but they would get 20% of the
309. vote and maybe a liberal Republican party or a moderate Republican party might run and they might
310. get 20% of the vote. So you would you would open the party system and every vote would matter.
311. People wouldn't be voting in these elections that are one party dominant. Now, a bigger state like
312. California, that's 52 seats right now. That's a lot of seats in a district. And I think generally
313. political scientists say, look, comparatively, and they say, oh, the sweet spot is, you know,
314. probably five to eight members per district that gives you modest proportionality, gives you a diversity of parties,
315. gives voters meaningful choice without overwhelming the ballot with like a thousand candidates or overwhelming the legislature with a thousand parties.
316. So, you know, maybe you split California into seven districts between seven and eight members.
317. And then, you know, the same thing as you have in the five member district in Connecticut, you have a seven member district.
318. And there's with seven member district, you could theoretically have seven different parties.
319. Every vote would matter. Parties put forth lists and you have the whole whole range of diverse perspectives that can get elected.
320. So and then I just think it's important to talk about a state like Louisiana, which was the state that was at issue in the Supreme Court Clay case that eviscerated the voting rights section two.
321. And Louisiana is a six state And an issue was whether you going to have two majority black districts or one Obviously Louisiana is a majority white state but it about third black third Democrat And now they redrawn the maps to be five to one Republican That means there be maybe one one black Democrat
322. Now, if you got rid of districts in the state of Louisiana and just had one statewide proportional allocation, there's no gerrymandering.
323. The reason that you have gerrymandering is that you have the lines to draw.
324. Connecticut, I think they have a pretty, pretty reasonable way of drawing lines.
325. It would probably be pretty hard to draw a majority Republican district without doing some violence to communities.
326. But in Louisiana and throughout the South, you know, there is this very active Republican gerrymandering that is taking away a generation of black representation, shutting Democrats out.
327. And they can do it because they can just carve up districts in a way that maximizes Republican support in Tennessee.
328. They already sliced Nashville into a bunch of pieces to eliminate the Democratic seat there.
329. Now they're slicing up Memphis to get rid of the Democratic seat there.
330. This is only possible because of the single-member district.
331. You made this proposal. It didn't get much press in the mainstream press because it was considered a resident of a territory called it ain't going to happen.
332. That is, the state legislature in Texas is not going to have proportional representation, which is clearly going to bring more Democratic House members from Texas, and nor is the legislature in Sacramento going to preside over increasing the number of Republicans that go to the House of Representatives.
333. What's your answer to that?
334. Congressional legislation?
335. What's your answer to the defeatism for so many reforms that lead Drotman? It ain't going to happen.
336. Well, I don't buy the defeatism entirely. So a few things. One is there are a number of states with statewide ballot initiatives. And in Michigan, for example, a group of folks are organizing to potentially run a ballot initiative for proportional representation.
337. Many of the same folks who supported a ballot initiative that brought independent redistricting to Michigan, which a lot of people said, oh, you can't do that. And they did that. And now they're organizing around proportional representation.
338. And I do think that we are in a moment in which the possibility for democratic reform has just opened up tremendously.
339. I think in the wake of this Clay decision and also in response to how the Trump administration has just shredded so many of our norms, that there is a sense that we just can't keep doing this.
340. And I've been struck by how many conversations I've had in the last few weeks taking these ideas much more seriously.
341. I published a book in 2020 called Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, the case for multi-party democracy in America, in which I argued that we ought to have proportional representation in multiple parties.
342. And I think there's been steady interest in that proposal.
343. I've done some pieces with The New York Times.
344. I did a quiz where people got to choose which of six parties they would belong to, and that's
345. been one of the greatest hits of New York Times opinion pages, as I've learned.
346. Over many years, people really liked the idea of what would it be like if we had more parties.
347. I did a big piece with the New York Times last January mapping out what the proportional representation proposal would look like I think there been growing mainstream interest in these ideas and I been hearing from more and more different corners
348. that maybe we ought to move beyond this system of single-member districts.
349. Maybe we've outlived the usefulness of our two-party system.
350. Certainly more so than any time that I've been advocating this proposal.
351. I really do think that we are in a moment in which big democratic reform is...
352. If the states don't do it and the initiative process doesn't move into the breach, can Congress do it under our Constitution?
353. Yeah. Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, the Elections Clause, gives Congress pretty broad latitude to mandate how members of Congress are elected.
354. Now, currently, the law, the controlling law is the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act, which was put in place in the wake of Reynolds v. Sims, one person, one vote, to basically prevent southern states from moving to block voting multi-member districts and to ensure equal size districts.
355. So Congress would just have to update that statute basically amended and that built on an 1842 law that was the first to mandate single member districts.
356. Has there been any polls on whether people like proportional representation?
357. There has been some polling. People like the idea of proportional representation as basic fairness, that people think that parties should get seats in proportion to the share of votes they get.
358. I've done some polling on it a few years ago.
359. I'm hoping to do a little bit more.
360. I think people like the idea of it as fairness.
361. Actually, I just saw an academic paper that came out.
362. But I think that one of the challenges is people don't entirely understand how it works.
363. And so it's a challenge to poll people on a concept that they don't know about.
364. But I think more and more people understand it.
365. And from the polling I've seen at a principles-based level, people get the idea that proportionality is a form of fairness and people like fairness.
366. It makes every vote count, for one thing.
367. Before we go to Steve, I've got to get your opinion on the top two laws in California, Alaska, Washington State.
368. It goes like this. In the primaries, they're open.
369. and the top two vote getters go to November. All the rest lose, including all third parties that
370. don't come close to getting the top two. They don't have a candidate in November. And right now,
371. because there are a half dozen primary candidates in the Democratic Party vying for the governorship
372. of California, there is a danger that the top two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates
373. come in in the top two, and one of them becomes governor of California. What do you think of that?
374. And why hasn't that been challenged constitutionally? Because it eliminates
375. the right of candidates to go to November. I think there is a challenge from minor parties
376. actually working its way up through the courts to challenge that on behalf of minor parties.
377. But I do agree it does really entrench, by having only two candidates, it
378. It entrenches the idea that there are only two choices and it has not been favorable
379. to minor parties in either Washington or California.
380. And on its merits, I've done a lot of the political science on this and the argument
381. that people made in California who were supportive of this reform was that oh well it force candidates to be more moderate But it actually hasn really changed at all who gets elected where they fit on the
382. one-dimensional spectrum that we force everybody into. So it hasn't, you know, marginally,
383. it's increased turnout, but still turnout in primaries is still incredibly low. And it also
384. has often created a general election where voters who are orphaned, who don't see their party's
385. candidate on the ballot, just don't bother to vote in that election. So on balance, I think
386. it's probably a net negative. And it just seems sort of like you're not attacking the big issue,
387. which is the single member district and the way it entrenches binary partisan competition and
388. It leaves most voters in overwhelmingly safe districts.
389. Anyway, let's go to Steve.
390. Lee, tell us about what did the founders think about all of this?
391. Is there anything in the Constitution, or what is it in the Constitution,
392. that mandates the system that we have now?
393. Nothing.
394. Nothing.
395. All right, very good.
396. Thanks for coming.
397. Mandates the system.
398. Now, interestingly, if we want to talk about the founders,
399. The idea of proportional representation actually is an American idea.
400. The first time you hear about proportional representation in any writings is that states should have proportional representation in the legislature, that larger states should get more seats than smaller states.
401. So proportional representation is mentioned in the debates around the Constitution.
402. It's just for states, not parties.
403. And actually, the first formula for proportional representation was invented by Thomas Jefferson.
404. It was for states, not parties.
405. The later Belgian guy by the name of de Haan claimed that he had invented it when Belgium
406. became the first country to adopt proportional representation in 1899.
407. But Daniel Webster had a system that actually Congress moved to in 1842 that I think is
408. actually a little bit fair to smaller parties in the Jefferson system.
409. has to do with divisors and math and probably more than you want to get into here. So they didn't say
410. anything about that. I think if you read Federalist number 10 and the whole Madisonian philosophy of
411. there being multiple different factions counteracting each other, you have an idea of
412. multi-party democracy there that no party should have a majority and coalition should be fluid and
413. shifting. And, you know, the thing that the framers worried about was the idea that you would have a
414. two-party system. And you read John Adams saying that the worst thing that would happen is if our
415. country is divided into two great parties. And they knew what was going to happen is that you'd
416. have a dominant party and a non-dominant party. And if the non-dominant party felt like it had
417. no chance of getting power, it would just say, screw it. And that's what caused the Civil War.
418. Once the South was isolated politically, it said, yeah, screw it. We're going to secede.
419. We're going to give up on this idea. So they understood it. They just thought that they were going to spread out power institutionally, different branches of government, federalism, and they were going to avoid the idea of political parties.
420. they thought that political parties were not so great.
421. But that was in 1787.
422. Once they get into government, Madison's saying,
423. oh, actually, political parties are really important
424. because they help us organize.
425. And Jefferson and Madison organized a party.
426. Washington and Hamilton organized a party.
427. And that's the origins of the American party system.
428. I think if they had recognized that political parties are
429. actually essential to democratic representation,
430. they would have almost certainly supported a multiparty
431. party proportional system. But of course, that hadn't been invented yet for party representation.
432. And the only system they knew was this single winner majority system that they just sort of
433. blindly imported from their colonial ancestors. Lee, don't some foreign countries have
434. proportional representation? Most do. I mean, very few countries still use the first past the
435. post system most advanced democracies most of most of western europe all of latin america a lot of
436. other countries so i like the most common system is proportional representation it's just the the
437. anglo countries uk which is having all kinds of challenges canada india that's a legacy the u.s
438. a few other countries used first past the post new zealand moved from first past the post to
439. proportional representation in the 90s when they declared that first past the post was dysfunctional
440. and they've been doing much better since well listen you should know that lee drummond is not
441. saying that this proportional representation is the be all and cure all of our political
442. ills by any means but it certainly tells voters that if they go out and vote their vote's going
443. account. Yes. It's not going to be wiped out if it's 49 percent or less. Exactly. Let's go to David.
444. Lee, if California gets 52 members of the House, are you saying that by law they could just make
445. the top 52 vote getters in a statewide election members of the House and then redistribute them
446. based on newly drawn congressional maps? No, they couldn't do that. Not under current law.
447. The current law, the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act that I referenced earlier, requires states to use single member districts.
448. Now, if Congress passed a law on proportional representation mandating proportionality, California would have to adapt.
449. Now, I would say that 52 people elected in one district is probably too many.
450. I mean, this is, for example, there are some forms of extreme proportional representation.
451. Israel has one electoral district for the entire Knesset, 120 members.
452. They wound up with a bunch of small parties.
453. The Netherlands is even more extreme version.
454. They have 150 members in their legislature and the entire country is one electoral district.
455. And that creates a lot of small parties, although it does allow for an animal rights party in the Dutch legislature.
456. but it does make it harder to form a governing coalition and it's a lot for voters.
457. So I think 52 members in a district is too much.
458. I wouldn't recommend that.
459. As I said, you know, between five to nine representatives per district.
460. And for California, that would probably mean splitting into seven or so smaller districts.
461. And I mean, California is a big state.
462. And, you know, maybe you want to think of those as kind of regional representative teams.
463. Unfortunately, our time is up.
464. We've been talking with Lee Drotman.
465. Lee, you want to give our listeners slowly your Substack contact so they can get in touch with you?
466. I have a Substack.
467. It's called Undercurrent Events.
468. You can just go on Substack and search for my name or search for Undercurrent Events.
469. And it is completely free.
470. I'm not monetizing it.
471. I'm just writing for the love of writing it.
472. And folks can subscribe there and get regular posts from me.
473. He also wrote a book on this called Breaking the Two Doom Loop The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America which is available at fine bookstores everywhere Thank you very much Lee All right Well thank you Ralph It good to talk to you We been speaking with Lee Drutman We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour
474. Stand up, stand up.
475. So, Ralph, you have some news items you'd like to call attention to. Fire away.
476. Trump and AIPAC collaborated to pour money into that poor Kentucky district,
477. And they defeated the independent-minded Thomas Massey, MIT grad, holder of patents, a former community executive in his district before he ran for the House.
478. He defied Trump on matters such as releasing the Epstein file, the Gaza massacre, the war in Iran, and a number of other things.
479. And his opponent was chosen by Trump, a former SEAL who didn't have any program. All he said was, I will be 100% with my president, Donald Trump. He refused to have any debates.
480. But the power of money and fanatic turnout by Trump voters in the primary, with a low turnout overall of voters, defeated Thomas Massey.
481. Now, he still has seven months to create nightmares for Trump in the House of Representatives, including holding his own hearings on impeachment in a committee room, like Mike Revell held hearings on the Pentagon Papers.
482. They can't stop that from happening. And he can do a lot of other things, including breaking the grip on no talk of impeachment among the Republicans in Congress.
483. I have one criticism. Because he is a rigid libertarian, he did not campaign on kitchen table issues. He didn't talk about raising the Kentucky minimum wage of $7.25 for the poor workers in his district. He didn't talk about increasing the frozen Social Security benefits since 1971, frozen for his elderly voters in the district.
484. He didn't talk about changing the tax system.
485. He didn't talk about increasing taxes, even when they were unfair.
486. He would allude to them.
487. But you know what libertarians are like.
488. So basically, he handicapped himself terribly and just kept saying, I voted with Trump on
489. 90% of the votes in the House.
490. These are the areas I cannot go with him on.
491. And he was quite eloquent in those areas, but they weren't kitchen table issues.
492. So I hope he makes the most of his seven months remaining.
493. One of the problems is a very low turnout in primaries, as we all know.
494. About 105,000 voters turned out, and there's about 500,000 eligible voters age 18 and over in that district.
495. So the fanatics for Trump obviously turned out more than the supporters, longtime supporters for Thomas Massey.
496. The second thing I wanted to point out is that there was a study in Sweden that might tickle people's fancy.
497. Apparently, cocaine is polluting waterways.
498. The stuff is dumped in waterways.
499. And these Swedish scientists wanted to see if the salmon who had more cocaine in their system
500. behaved differently from salmon who didn't have cocaine in their system.
501. And they found that the salmon who had cocaine not only swam faster, but swam further in the waterways.
502. Just a tidbit that I catch when I read the newspapers.
503. More seriously, Trump is continuing to want to destroy something known as the Chemical Board,
504. which is a small agency that alerts people and mobilizes knowledge about chemical spills in the environment including what could be chemical plant disasters that could wipe out a town or a city
505. And this chemical board somehow has reached the ire of this ignoramus called tyrant Donald J.
506. Trump, and he wants to erase it. And the nice thing about this story is that the members of
507. the chemical board are fighting back. And they've got all the evidence for people to say to Trump,
508. are you crazy? Do you know how many chemical plants are within lethal distance of major cities
509. and places like Texas and Louisiana and elsewhere? Another item in the news was that the destruction
510. of southern Lebanon is continuing at a Gaza level. They're basically completely wiping out villages
511. and agricultural areas in order to control southern Lebanon all the way to the Latani River,
512. which they have had their eye on for a long time. They actually occupied southern Lebanon in the
513. 1970s and 80s for 18 years militarily. They want that and they want the extension of the gas fields
514. off the Lebanese southern coast, the natural gas fields. And they're doing it with U.S. weapons
515. and with Trump's support. Now, every president I remember has called Lebanon our ally.
516. Lebanon is our ally, says Lyndon Johnson. Lebanon is our ally, says Richard Nixon, and on. What are
517. we doing allowing our ally to be destroyed? What are we doing? Ask AIPAC. Ask the mysterious grip
518. by Netanyahu over Donald J. Trump. Another issue I want to raise is this. The invasion of Ukraine
519. has probably quite a few causes. Putin has used it as a distraction from his dictatorship and the
520. poor state of the Russian economy, to be sure. But let's go back earlier when Clinton was president
521. and NATO was expanded to include the Eastern European countries, several of them on the border
522. of Russia. Well, that's a sensitive border. In two world wars, it's killed over 50 million
523. Russians, you know, World War I, World War II, when it was invaded by the German army.
524. And why did Clinton do this? One reason is he saw a lot of arms sales that we could convert their
525. weakened military with F-16s and all kinds of weapons built by Raytheon and Boeing and other
526. military companies. And he was playing clever, you know, like Clinton does. He outsmarted himself.
527. Well, that appalled the Russians and not only Putin.
528. Clinton was moving to possibly bring Ukraine in to NATO.
529. Remember, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
530. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, several countries were formed from the Soviet Union empire, like Belarus and Kazakhstan.
531. And Ukraine was one of them.
532. So look at the consequences.
533. We now have a Ukraine being battered.
534. We now have a Russia being battered by new forms of drones that are going all the way to Moscow.
535. And the death toll of Russian soldiers has reached over 350,000.
536. The death toll of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam exceeded 50,000.
537. This is a massive fatality toll.
538. And you can imagine the injury levels.
539. And, of course, the Ukrainian toll, which is less than that, is still quite massive as well.
540. the death of Ukrainian soldiers and the civilian injuries I just want to point this out that once again corporate profits and corporate influence in Washington play a very consequential role and put a lot of dangerous forces in motion
541. as we know, with climate violence, with ignoring the effects of contagious diseases,
542. drug companies not interested in those if they come from abroad, and so on and so forth.
543. All right. Very good.
544. I want to thank our guests again, Chris Townsend and Lee Drummond.
545. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show for you podcast listeners.
546. Stay tuned for some bonus material we call The Wrap-Up featuring Francesco DeSantis with In Case You Haven't Heard.
547. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour Substack site soon after the episode is posted.
548. Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel.
549. And for Ralph's weekly column, it's free at Nader.org.
550. For more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at CorporateCrimeReporter.com.
551. The American Museum of Tort Law has gone virtual.
552. You can visit TortMuseum.org to explore the exhibits, take a virtual tour, and learn about iconic tort cases from history.
553. To order your copy of The Capitol Hill Citizen, Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight, it's at CapitolHillCitizen.com.
554. And remember to continue the conversation.
555. after each show, you can go to the comments section
556. at ralphnaderradiohour.com
557. and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
558. The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour
559. are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman, and Matthew Maron.
560. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
561. Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise Up,
562. was written and performed by Kemp Harris.
563. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
564. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
565. Thank you, Ralph.
566. Thank you, everybody.
567. to step up.
568. Rise up.
569. Rise up.
570. I know you want to rise up.
571. Stand up.
572. Stand up.
573. You've been sitting way too long.
574. Stand up.
575. I think you'll step up.
576. Step up.
577. I think that you should step up.
578. Rise up.
579. Don't laugh.
580. It's just a force you down.
581. Stand up.
582. Stand up.
583. You've been sitting way too long.
584. Stand up.
585. Greetings. I'm Chuck Foster, host of Reggae Central right here on KPFK.
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589. And until then, peace.
590. On April...
591. For the third of this year, the White House released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal.