But when you look at the surprising success of, say, Howard Dean's candidacy -- and admittedly, it flamed out -- doesn't that indicate that the Democratic Party has come to its senses in a way that wasn't apparent in 2000 or even 2002? Do you see that at all? Do you see any kind of substantive change in the Democratic Party in the last three years?

Rhetorically it was very promising in the primaries among some candidates. But you see that it has now turned into a temporary flurry as the corporate Democrats and the DLC and the Washington Democrats take over the party from the insurgents -- Howard Dean and the smaller candidates, most prominently Dennis Kucinich. They had their little flirtation with progressive rhetoric. Some of it was very good. There were times when I thought Howard Dean was plagiarizing my statements of 2000 about corporate power.

But ultimately you believe that the end result is that the Democrats are back at the same place they were a couple of years ago.

Yes, there doesn't seem to be that much difference.

There's been talk that you will sit down with John Kerry in the next month. Is that meeting going to happen, and what would you like to see come of that? What would you like to say to John Kerry?

I've already met with Howard Dean. Yes, I'm going to meet with John Kerry. We're going to talk about how we can collaborate to beat George W. Bush while we remain competitors of sorts.

You do hope to push John Kerry in a progressive and leftward direction. What specific things would you like to see him do or say?

Well, I'd like to see him become very specific on national health insurance. I would like to see him adopt a single-payer plan as proposed by the Physicians for National Health Insurance, a group of 10,000 physicians -- it's all in the New England Journal of Medicine. Second, we're going to push him more on energy, to be specific on solar and renewable energy with objective targets that should be maintained. Third, I think he's got to go up on his minimum wage. And fourth, he's got to deal with the globalization issue, which he voted for, NAFTA and the WTO. Those are some of the things.

When you announced you were running in February, there was a paroxysm of anger, even rage, from progressives who felt you were making the wrong decision. Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, Jim Hightower, the Nation, Jimmy Carter, Howard Dean -- all of them questioned why you were running. How do you respond to their criticisms?

Yeah, well, there's an epidemic of low expectations by Democrats toward the Democratic Party. Except for Noam Chomsky. He has a different reason. His reason is that this is such a fanatic, messianic, militaristic regime that, in his words, it could take us over the cliff globally. So he has a different scale of operating. The problem with the Democratic Party is expressed exactly in the comments that you just referred to from the Nation, from Jim Hightower. I mean if you read Jim Hightower's latest book, you'd run out and run against the Democrats. That's how devastating his critique is. So why is he saying that he doesn't think I should have run? Because his expectation levels are much different than mine. I have a higher estimate of the voters in this country. [That they are] willing to be appealed to, and willing to respond, and willing to demand more of their party. The tip-off on low expectations is that none of these groups that are supporting the Democratic Party are asking anything in return. That's important: They're not asking anything of Kerry in return. They're so freaked out, you see.

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