Ralph Nader Calls Hillary Clinton A 'Deeply-Rooted Corporatist,' Praises Bernie Sanders

Nader told Ramos that he believes that people should vote in ways that align with their ideals, and that they should not embrace the "lesser of two evils."

"Not tactical votes, not least-worst votes," Nader said. "If you do tactical, least-worst votes, you lost your bargaining power over the candidates. They never look back when you basically say to them, 'Well I don't like either candidate but you're not as bad as the other one.'"

Throughout his political and activist career, Nader has been a forceful critic of what he calls the "two-party tyranny." He feels that, by cutting off alternatives to status quo Democrats and Republicans, the political establishment has set limits on political discourse that are, in principle, at odds with the free and democratic society American politicians claim to support.

Despite this, however, Nader has expressed support for Sanders's decision to run as a Democrat rather than as a third party candidate.

"By running as a Democrat, Sanders declined to become a complete political masochist, and he avoided exposing his campaign to immediate annihilation by partisan hacks," Nader wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

"Because if he had run as an independent, he would have faced only one question daily in the media, as I did: 'Do you see yourself as a spoiler?' The implication being, of course, that he had no chance of winning. His popular agenda would have been totally ignored by a horse-race-obsessed mass media, which would have latched on instead to a narrative in which Sanders was unfairly hurting Hillary Clinton's chances against whichever Republican wound up with the other major-party nomination, as if any Democrat is automatically entitled to the votes of progressives."

Nader's prediction of the American political scene to come, even in the face of the successes of the Sanders campaign, remains as careful as ever.

"I believe that should Clinton overcome Sanders and claim the Democratic nomination, the party will continue to be the champion of war and Wall Street, little changed by the primary competition," Nader has written. "But perhaps after the comparative success of Sanders's campaign, this state of affairs will invigorate more courageous candidates to follow his lead in challenging establishment, commercialized politics."

And Sanders is doing everything he can to make this happen.

"Sanders plans to support at least 100 candidates running for a wide range of public offices — from local school boards to Congress — at least through the 2016 elections," USA Today notes.

"If we are successful, what it will mean is that the progressive message and the issues that I campaigned on will be increasingly spread throughout this country," Sanders said.

"The goal here is to do what I think the Democratic establishment has not been very effective in doing. And that is at the grass-roots level, encourage people to get involved, give them the tools they need to win, help them financially."