Nader congratulates Obama

Nov. 5, 2008, 3:40 a.m. - "Senator Obama led a campaign of tactical brilliance that appears to be bereft of specific mandates. It is up to an aroused citizenry to organize behind these mandates which we were privileged to advance. These progressive mandates (living wage, Medicare for all, and a just foreign policy, and many more) reflect majority support and our long overdue redirections and reforms in our country.

Senator Obama will be President-elect Obama soon to preside over what our founders described as a representative government under our Constitution. Thomas Jefferson once said that the function of representative government is to "curb the excesses of the monied interests." The corporate dominated government that Senator Obama inherits includes what President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned the nation against in his farewell address -- the military industrial complex. It includes many other priorities entrenched by "the monied interests," or global corporations, to drain and strip-mine the necessities and deserved justice long denied to so many Americans in their various roles.

Such challenges to apply available solutions to stagnant injustices and deprivations require a transforming leader who speaks truth with democratic power to falsehood and plutocratic power. This in turn demands a deliberate, thoughtful and challenging personality.

The Nader/Gonzalez campaign joins other Americans in wishing you well in the White House. We will remain alert to opportunities that advance those final words of the pledge of allegiance -- "with liberty and justice for all."