Europe, no more than the US, should not be fooled by the giant corporate advocates of the new economy, Mr Ralph Nader warned yesterday. The citizens' rights champion and Green candidate for the Presidency told foreign journalists here that the EU should reject the myth that to compete it must abandon its social safety net.
The reality of the US new economy may be soaring profits and executive bonuses, but it was also 46 million without health insurance, 47 million workers earning less than a living wage, and 13 million children going hungry regularly, he said.
Mr Nader, polling around 3 per cent nationally, is causing consternation among Democrats particularly in the north-west states where poll showings of between 2 and 8 per cent threaten to tip marginals to the Bush camp.
He takes the long view of history: otherwise he might as well stay at home. There's certainly no point in running for the US Presidency for the Green Party. "The priority is democracy," he says, "and challenging the hijacking by the two-party duopoly of all three branches of government."
To that end he is launching a long-term "democracy train" whose destination is as much 2004 as next Tuesday. If he can make 5 per cent he gets matching funding next time.
He is unapologetic about his possible effect on the fate of Vice-President Al Gore. "Only Al Gore can defeat Al Gore," he says. "It's not the obligation of a new party to worry about whether one or other of the corrupt parties wins."
It is an argument that recalls the Marxist strategy of "revolutionary defeatism". The idea is to go down in a blaze of glory, preferably bringing down with you the false gods of the reform movement, to rise from the ashes, vindicated.
Take the appointment by President Reagan of Mr James Watt, despised by environmentalists, as interior secretary. "He was a pro-vocateur," Mr Nader explains, pointing to a doubling of the membership of watchdog groups that followed. Appointment of "an anaesthetiser" would have left the public complacent.
The argument drives Democrats into a frenzy of rage. In eight states, polls suggest, Mr Nader may do exactly that. In Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, frantic last-minute appeals to workers, gays, women and environmentalists are made.
He has been sweeping the country like a breath of fresh air, addressing mass rallies where his sharp anti-establishment rhetoric delights. They pay to hear him. "Bush is a corporation running for president disguised as a person." The main parties have mutated "into a two-headed monster wearing different make-up".
The anti-business language and calls for political reform are laced with demands for the decriminalisation of cannabis, campaign reform, easier voter registration, a moratorium on the death penalty, higher minimum wages, and the establishment of a universal healthcare system. He wants to cut the military by a third, bring home troops from Europe, stop the next world trade round and end commercial logging in forests.