Obvious answer: he’s just trying to make a point, the whole thing is a publicity stunt, and his campaign has never had and still does not have any credibility whatsoever.
> But the result was almost no national media focused on a campaign that was actually more viable than that of at least two of the other Democratic candidates,
“More viable” meaning that when you add up the poll numbers for Lessig plus those other two candidates, the percentage rounds to zero. Likewise they have no budget, no endorsements, a tiny donor base, no institutional support from the Democratic party, no grass-roots campaign organization, etc. etc.
Lessig’s approach to politics is to shout “HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT ME! I don’t have any experience or support, and I haven’t tried to engage with the political system before, but vote for me because all those other guys are corrupt!” That works if you’re a billionaire with universal name-recognition like Trump, running in a primary with a bunch of weak other candidates, targeting primary voters responsive to knee-jerk racism and insults. Lessig isn’t Trump though.
In the 2014 midterm elections his PAC raised a moderate amount of money mostly from Silicon Valley VCs, threw it at a handful of congressional races, and had absolutely zero impact on anything.
Seems like it’s not working out this time either.
The becoming president and then resigning thing was weird. I'm glad he's dropping it, because you can hate the method all you want, and I too think he comes off really distant out of touch sometimes, but what he's saying needs to be heard.
The most likely way to improve things at the moment is to elect another Democrat to office, and hope that Justice Scalia and/or Justice Kennedy resigns within the next few years, and the composition of the Supreme Court changes enough to reverse the Citizens United case. Also, hope that the Justice Department under a Democratic president stays aggressive about promoting voting rights around the country.
Beyond that, the next big hope is getting Democrats back in control of the House of Representatives, which probably can’t happen until after the 2020 census, and only if the Democrats gain control of enough state legislatures to redraw fairer district boundaries.
He raises money from lots of small donors with interests like you and me rather than a few big donors with interests diametrically opposed to you and me.
That's a bad example. For even a relatively early stage startup, raising money is the actual job description for a typical startup CEO. They probably spend more than 70% of their time on it.
It doesn't invalidate your point at all, however. Lawmakers are not startup CEO's. By providing every incentive to simply raise more money to ensure further employment, we've created just the worst possible system for functional government.
Why do they do this? Because the politicians who spend the most money on advertising generally win the elections, right? I'm wondering if what we're seeing here is the failure of democracy with universal suffrage. Most of the voters don't seem to be independent thinkers. They could have voted for politicians who haven't been "bought". But they don't. For example, there are other political parties out there - Green Party, Libertarian Party etc., but almost nobody votes for those.
> they would never get anything done
You will have a hard time convincing HN that what US needs are more laws, especially at a rate limited by time available to politicians for writing them!
Broadly speaking limits on campaign donations are fairly small (Max $5k) and average donation sums ($100-200) are extremely small. You will need anywhere from 2-8 million to run for Congress, about 25 million to run for Senate.
As an entrepreneur, what do you call it when you raise capital of several million from hundreds or thousands of investors? That's right, you call it revenue, and you call those investors your customers.
It's a weird model, but the US system makes a fundraising politician to personally talk to thousands and thousands of his constituents and reach out to 10-fold that figure to gauge interest. That has a significant positive side-effect of the politician being intimately familiar with their biggest concerns and often even smaller, local or personal problems that need fixing. After all, if you want to be a great salesman, you better know the customer very well.
The idea that most politicians are just empty shells that do whatever their funders tell them is just wrong. The truth is that it's cheaper and much more effective for funders to give money to politicians that already support their positions.
Lessig believes that if big money is taken out of politics that politicians will suddenly vote for fixing climate change, pass gun control, etc. But they wont because the ones that are against these things aren't against them because they are told to be, they are against them because they genuinely believe that they are bad policies. It's ideology, not money, that drives them.
Now that's just inaccurate, unless you mean merely that he's never run for office. He has engaged with the political system on numerous fronts over the span of a couple of decades, sometimes effectively, sometimes not. He's made real positive change in the world (possibly as much as anyone else running, if we're being honest), occasionally through political means.
But, more importantly, I genuinely trust him to do what he says. Which is definitely more than can be said of the vast majority of people vying for the title on either side of the fence (the entirety of GOP field is particularly villainous this year, but the current leader for the DNC isn't exactly a pillar of virtue).
But, you're right that he is running a losing race. Several commentators on the first debate said they would have preferred to see Lessig on the stage, and perhaps if that would have happened, things would look different. I don't know. That said, I think you're missing the point of why he's so thoroughly unlikely to even get fair treatment by the DNC, much less taken seriously as a candidate. Despite his impressive fundraising for a "nobody" in politics, and despite being clearly smarter and more broadly competent than some of the other DNC candidates, his desire to tear down the very system that feeds the DNC (and the GOP) virtually guarantees he will never be taken seriously.
A reform candidate in a thoroughly corrupt system stands no chance. Short of pitchforks and the guillotine, our system likely won't be reformed.
But that’s a very limited kind of engagement with the overall political system.
If you want to become president, you need to build a broad base of support, which means spending many years organizing, becoming versed in salient political issues, directly working on a wide range of issues with a wide range of other people, leaving a public record and earning credibility. You won’t be able to build a large grass-roots organization, earn endorsements from major institutional political players, build a donor base, etc. on pure message alone. The easiest way to meaningfully engage in a public way is by being elected to political office, but there are probably other possible ways for someone willing to put the years of work in (e.g. as a high-level executive department official, as a career judge, as a military general, ...).
Right now Lessig’s only reputation is as “that guy who doesn’t like copyright, and keeps grandstanding about campaign finance”, but he has no broader credibility as a presidential candidate. Lessig is not “smarter” or “more competent” than the leading candidates; rather, it’s clear that he’s politically naïve in the extreme, has no idea how to run a serious campaign, and would have no idea what to do were he by some miracle elected to high office.
^ I think your political bias is showing through.
In my opinion this is one of the strongest sets of candidates for the Republican primary in a long time. And I am far from alone in that assessment.
Yes there are some weak candidates (there are always weak candidates in both parties), but it is far from "a bunch".
I live in Europe, and from here, your comments sounds like the grumblings of someone born and raised in some far shore of the USA where creationism is still taught at school and who genuinely believes that more guns are required to prevent mass shootings.
> have no budget, no endorsements, a tiny donor base, no institutional support from the Democratic party, no grass-roots campaign organization
That's the very reason why the American system is fucked up : you shouldn't get a chance to get elected for the sole reason that you have any of these.
And I'm not pretending that European models are perfect, far from that. They are just less fucked up - North American elections look like a joke from here, almost as much as South African "democracies"/North Koea where they are president from father to son and get elected with scores approaching 90%. The only downside to the joke is that USA are far more powerful than NK.
> a billionaire with universal name-recognition like Trump
Outside of the US, nobody knows who he is.
I'm 27, engineer, speak four languages and have traveled around Europe, North Africa, "Middle-East", and South Asia.
The only things that I knew about him prior to the 2016 presidential campaign were that he is an eccentric billionaire and has/had alleged bounds to the mafia (and the only reason why I knew that is because I care about national North American politics - which most of the non-USA residents don't give a shit about). Since then, the only time he is referred to in the European media is to underline the stupidity of his statements/behavior.
On the other hand, I've learned about Lessig during highschool : his legal challenges ; his role at Harvard, Yale and Standford ; his role in the creation of Create Commons, etc. He is seen as a dedicated, brilliant, man who tries and tackles tough issues. Every educated person knows or at least have heard about Lessig and/or Creative Commons.
Ben Carson is #2 though. But that's probably also due to the "weak"* candidates.
* I think you mean relatively unknown compared to a former first lady.
At this point & with the right campaign you could run a rump roast for the presidency and it'd have a decent shot at grabbing a signficant share of the vote.
I could name way more but Lessig top problems imo are:
He lacks conviction. That rump roast is more red blooded than he is. If you are running for president, you can't just expect to win based on having a few good ideas. You need forcefulness. Someone says you can't attend a debate? You don't kick back and watch it on tv. You show up anyway and have your supporters provoke a riot when they don't let you in. Hopefully the media makes a field day out of it. Arrested? Even better. It fits in with your narrative.
Lessig's next big problem is - He needs an angle. Lessig seems to be too principled to participate in the usual games that gets people to the oval. That puts him at a big disadvantage. If he doesn't like how the sausage is made, he needs a strategy or SOMETHING to compensate for the power the machine gives you. Trump is a natural showman. Rubio is handsome, Ben Carson is a religious nut. Each of these guys is in the race, but Lessig isn't. Until Lessig finds something that gives him some oomph, he might as well just curl up into a fetal.
Which 20 (or 22 if you count the time when Scott Walker and Rick Perry was still running, which is only fair), then yes, 2016 is in the upper bracket, but not an outlier. Both 2008 and 1988 had 22 candidates running for president.
Here is a handy list:
2012: Democrats: 1, Republicans: 13. (Total: 14.)
2008: Democrats: 10, Republicans: 12. (Total: 22.)
2004: Democrats: 11, Republicans: 1. (Total: 12.)
2000: Democrats: 2, Republicans: 13. (Total: 15.)
1996: Democrats: 3, Republicans: 10. (Total: 13 + 1.)
1992: Democrats: 8, Republicans: 7. (Total: 15 + 1.)
1988: Democrats: 13, Republicans: 9. (Total: 22.)
1984: Democrats: 8, Republicans: 2. (Total: 10.)
1980: Democrats: 4, Republicans: 10. (Total: 14 + 1.)
The Democrats, on the other hand, have a pretty strong hand with Hillary Clinton.
The 2008 book The Party Decides pretty much runs down how the primaries are mostly a show, and it's really the party leadership that decides who gets to be the nominee. No presidential candidate since and including 1980 have become their parties' nominee without endorsement from the party leadership.
Additionally, you are not getting more choice. Unless you live in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina. If you live elsewhere, the primaries are likely to have been decided, so your vote will have little meaning. And by the time you get to the general election, you will - as in any U.S. presidential election - have two choices.
Money are not creating all these candidates, chaos is. And either way, you are not getting more choice.
A better solution to your problem might be encouraging third parties by abolishing your First past the Post system. Switch to party-list proportional representation in Congress and have the popular vote decide the presidential election.
In the latter's case, you can have serious campaign finance reform, without restricting your real choices. What we want is for the money "vote" to be an equalizer just like the regular vote. If 200 families can pick a "winner", despite millions of other people actually wanting someone else to win, then something is seriously wrong with that democracy, and the money vote is way too skewed in favor of a few.
The point, stated more explicitly. There is a relatively small overton window permitted by the media - this is essentially what Chomsky would call "flak machines" and Moldbug would call the "cathedral". The "People", as you call them, will simply support whoever the media chooses to anoint. This set of candidates will basically be nothing but a few left wing Republicans and establishment Democrats (think Bush/Romney/Hillary) and we'll get more of the same.
In contrast, the richest 200 families are far less monolithic than the media. Money actually makes it possible for choices that the media establishment dislikes to get real traction. For example, Ross Perot or Donald Trump. If the People like such a candidate, they can then vote for that candidate.
tl;dr; The media has network effects which enforce a narrow overton window. In contrast, one eccentric rich guy can - if he chooses to spend lots of money - break through that and get other ideas out there.
"Between both parties, we have over 20 people running for President."
That really isn't a lot of people considering our population size? The allowance of large swaths of money just widens the pool of Wackadoodles we are forced to pick from. Yea, the candidates eventually show off too many warts, and we are stuck voting for a person who seems slightly better than the other guy?
With money, we sit back and are spoon fed these candidates.
Without money, I wonder if we would really take these elections/candidates seriously? Would their be popular websites devoted just to candidates? Would we be up late debating one candidate, over the next? Or would be at some fun website? Probally the fun website? Maybe we haven't had it bad enough to really care?
I just don't know.
I look at it this way; would medical researchers be a lot father along curing real illnesses, and diseases if drug companies weren't allowed to advertise to the idiots?
I believe--yes. These drug companies would be forced to look beyond the quick dollar curing a limp weenie, baldness, or pimping a happy pill that's slightly better than placebo in bad studies.
Without advertising Doctors(trained, educated people in alleviating serious disease) would be calling the shots. Trained doctors would be telling researchers what their patients need, not the other way around?
Maybe this is not the best analogy? I really don't have an answer.
I just don't feel money and politics need to go together.
We got luckey with Obama, but that was a fluke. (yea, I know a lot of you don't like the man, but I feel like he tried. He originally tries to do the right thing, but is/was derailed by politicians controlled by big money. His original health care bill was great, until the Rebublicans got their hands on it. He was forced to change it, or we wouldn't have anything.)
Bye-I'll try to get some sleep. Or, wish I could sleep well.
Ultimately it is the voters who decide. No matter how much money a billionaire puts into ads, when he or she goes to vote, their vote counts as much as mine. A greater diversity of platforms and opinions simply feeds more information to more voters. I don't see how that is a bad thing for democracy.
But in all these words he never gets around to explaining how as President he would actually make the reform happen, other than saying it'd be his "first priority" and (twice) that he would "work with Congress."
Oh, is that all it's going to take to completely upend the deeply entrenched systemic power of elites who are richer than Croesus, Larry? We just need a President who wants it bad enough, and is willing to ask Congress for it nicely? Huh.
I bet Barack Obama wishes he'd thought of that. All this time he could have just gone down to Capitol Hill, clicked his heels three times and made the Koch brothers disappear! Who knew?
Lessig is such a paradox to me. His heart's in the right place, he's clearly earnest, and he's managed to accomplish some remarkable things, like Creative Commons. But every time he wades into electoral politics he does so in ways that are so desperately naïve that they'd be funny, if the stakes weren't so high. It's Mr. Bean Goes To Washington.
That's about as exact as any politician gets on the campaign trail. They say no plan survives enemy contact? I'd include that no path to achieving a campaign promise survives the election. By swear-in time, a large chunk of congress is brand new and it's an entirely different game of chess when you actually get in there.
> Lessig is such a paradox to me. His heart's in the right place, he's clearly earnest, and he's managed to accomplish some remarkable things, like Creative Commons. But every time he wades into electoral politics he does so in ways that are so desperately naïve that they'd be funny, if the stakes weren't so high. It's Mr. Bean Goes To Washington.
If running a country was based solely on the ability to understand complex problems and provide novel solutions, I'd say Lessig is a top candidate among US citizens to run our country. But unfortunately, before any of that gets to happen, someone needs to get elected. And you must first play The Game before you can get a crack at getting something positive done. And therein lies the problem. How can one play the a game that runs counter to the fiber of their being? Yes he's running, but he is not playing The Game.
Same was said about a big-eared Senator from Chicago with a funny name, that gave a good political speech in 2004.
Lessig is trying to find a mix between himself, the platform, and the process. You need to be naive if you ever hope to solve any seemingly intractable problem.
Lessig doesn’t have any of those things.
Totally different situation. People recognized Obama's potential as a politician, even if they didn't agree with him. They only doubted how far he would go in that period of time.
* Lessig is trying to reform US politics with minimal grassroots support and from the outside. That's pretty much impossible, even without the sort of broken system he's trying to reform.
* Bernie Sanders seems to be offering similar reforms, though not as a No.1 priority. Lessig is essentially arguing that he'll implement one Sanders policy as a priority, and then get out of the way - that sounds completely silly to me, and I don't see why you wouldn't just vote Sanders instead.
* I'd contend that the problems in US politics run much deeper than campaign finance - voting systems, the structure of government, separation of powers, etc all need a thorough look and possible overhaul. Any campaign finance reform would probably end up being disappointingly ineffective compared to how it's being sold.
At this point he kind of reminds me of Donald Trump who also has not taken time to formulate many policy positions but just wants to the voters to trust him it'll all be great.
Additionally, a big part of being President is just the relentless work at championing your causes and causing your opponents to fail if they refuse to compromise. Lessig seems allergic to this type of work, politics, and campaigning in general. I don't know how he expects to get his legislation passed.
Even on the issue of corruption, I'm not sure he's effectively explained his solution. He's just laid out legislation to pass, but hasn't detailed how he'll get Congress to pass it without amendments that destroy it, how he'll keep the Supreme Court from eviscerating it, and how the rules could withstand attempts to game them.
Errr, as far as I know he hasn't entirely done that. From his web site, https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ he has two specific "Equal Right to Vote" laws plus "In addition, we will enact automatic voter registration and turn election day into a national holiday." Then there's a Ranked Choice Voting item with specific language, but the third item is not specific, and as other discussions here have noted, here the devil is in the details:
CITIZEN FUNDED ELECTIONS
All citizens deserve an equal ability to choose our leaders.
The Citizen Equality Act will end pay-to-play politics by changing the way we fund campaigns by taking the best of Rep. Sarbanes’ Government by the People Act, and Represent.US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid would give every voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service and work as a lobbyist.
Of course every outsider wants reform. It's nice to see a smart person thinking creatively about how to achieve it. Still, you don't get to be Commander-in-Chief unless you can instill trust that you can handle being Commander-in-Chief.
Middle east is irreparable mess, the US president is not all powerful. Russia is big but regional power (for now). Europe should learn to take care of itself (Disclaimer - I am citizen of EU nation).
Whether he switches to something more likable or not will be an indicator of how savvy he would be on the job.
It is on this second half I'd like to comment.
It shifts the focus on form rather than content. Sure form has its non-negligible role, but in politics and most domains it should never take precedence over content, the actual message itself. And here lies one part of the problem Lessig is trying to go after: the corruption of our mind in its ability to be seduced by form at the expense of content. It is that kind of corruption that makes it possible for movie actors without real political substance to become president. It is that kind of corruption that makes the present political system a democratic farce.
If we want him to succeed we have to do our part too, and it's precisely because we haven't for ages, that we have such situation today. Even if he succeeds and changes the rules of the political game, if we the people also don't change the way we think, then this can start all over again in 4 years without us even realizing.
So maybe he could do with another pair of glasses, but we the people also need another pair of glasses.
Deal?
There's plenty of substance with Lessig. I just am talking about one bit of substance, which is whether he has the pragmatism needed to get and then to do the job or not.
The glasses (which I actually like; not sure where you got your "fact"... but I doubt US voters will) are the form here, to use your word. Not the substance. They are trivial.
So yes, the glasses are not substance. His lack of pragmatism in clinging to them is substance.
And I want to hear about other issues, too, if he's seriously running for president. What about local police corruption, violence, and abuse? What about drone assassinations? What about corporate welfare that socializes risk and privatizes rewards? What about poverty and basic income? What about simplifying the legal system so that justice isn't too expensive for most people? What about extra-legal punishment like no-fly lists? What about the goddamn NSA? What about the security theater at the airport we pay for and endure?
From the other candidates all we hear about is "the economy", mid-east terrorism and related problems, immigration, and now and again (against all odds) climate change. From Lessig you just hear about corruption. If you want to impress me as a real Presidential candidate, speak eloquently about the days when the US would never have even considered torturing someone for any reason; when 1984 was a cautionary tale about surveillance, not a manual on how to do it; when we needed to work together to defeat an enemy, we did it, or to achieve a great goal like the moon, we did it, and how we can do it again, but this time we're going to End Oil, worldwide. I want to hear about how we can use technology to make government at every level more accountable and more responsive, and I want to hear more about our aspirations. I want to hear that we will recover the first asteroid from the asteroid belt within 20 years. I want to hear that federal funding will be tied to the creation of independent police review panels in every major city. I want to hear that blanket surveillance will be made explicitly illegal.
But I don't hear hardly any of that, not even from Lessig. Which makes me sad.
Regarding hearing about other issues, near the end of the article:
> But beyond that priority, I would do everything else a president must do, too. Which means I bear the burden in this campaign of convincing America I could do that well. Like every other candidate, I will outline my position on the policies that I would press, once reform is achieved. In every relevant way, my campaign will be like every other campaign—except mine will place democracy first.
I suspect his positions will at least start out closer to something like an academic consensus than any other candidate, but am prepared to be disappointed.
If he were to be elected he would have a very strong mandate to fight for the reforms he proposes -- a strong enough mandate that Congress might be forced to adhere to it. If the people put Lessig in the Presidency it's pretty clear what the people want. A Democratic congressperson or senator who voted against such reforms would surely be risking his/her job. The same might even be said for TeaPartiers.
Regarding everything else... he claims most of it won't happen because the system is rigged. Most good causes like the ones you list could never command the singular and focused attention from the people it would take to defeat the powers that oppose them, even if the people generally would be in favor. We don't have a referendum system. That's his whole point -- to hack one in. I think it's still his point, he's just realizing that he has to play politics to do it.
Note peoples' diverging approval ratings between Congress as a whole and their own Congresspersons. Each Congressperson could find a local reason to nitpick over, and thus vote against, a measure they and the country broadly support.
This would get him more attention, it would get some conservatives voting for him, and it would get some some progressives voting for him. As a progressive, I'd accept a term with a conservative president if it meant taking a huge step to fix the system as a whole.
The United States isn't a startup. You can't have a Minimum Viable Presidency focused on a single issue.
Your comment is ironic to the core. The role of POTUS is not to serve the current system of contributors after the fact. That's the nature of the problem. The idea that POTUS is sancrosanct or even in a different class (projects to the world at large, lol) shows how far we have diverged from the concept of a public servant. POTUS is just a man and deserving little more than cursory protections and respect. The political system has been corrupted to make it a MONUMENTAL effort to get someone in the office. This does not make the station special. We have had real need for reform and this backward thinking that POTUS is elevated is part of the cultural shift that needs to occur to break the corruption cycle. It won't, of course. Partly because people are too stupid to break their own socialization (nobody will acknowledge it's so broken that anyone elected is unqualified, so you get lip service to "fight corruption") and partly because statistically, no large democracy has ever even accidentally broken the cycle before a catastrophic decline.
What does President Lessig do during the first 100 days of his Presidency if war breaks out? What if a natural disaster strikes putting millions of Americans at risk? We have no idea because his Presidency is not about governing towards a better future but rather tearing down a system he doesn't like.
Noble as his idea may sound on the surface it is a childish proposal which does not take into account the complexity of the system it intends to address.
Many of the far-right members in the House of Representatives that identify with the Tea Party are also highly principled. Listen to their campaigns and you'll hear how they'll "fix Washington" and such. One may or may not agree with those principles, but many of those members are steadfast in their beliefs, and govern based on those beliefs.
And what has been accomplished? To quote Admiral Stockdale - Gridlock!
Reform will never happen with a single leader. It will take the right people in all levels of government to make it happen.
That being said, I don't believe 'equality' is what we need. What we need it is a society that rewards those who teach, learn and work for the good of the community with security and dignity.
It is just inconvenient, that I am not an US-American. But if he would run for election in my country, I would give him my vote.
The reason: He really takes democracy seriously -- some thing, that I would not attest to most people in our government -- and definitively not to the leading politicians of most political parties in my country.
That is the reason, I fear that democracy is bound to fail -- and to be replaced by corporate ruling (in fact, we are already at this point, where corporations have much more power than politicians or voters).
He would've been better off organizing people to get one or more of the legit Dem candidates to promise to work on this reform if elected.
This also assumes that the president has enough influence to get meaningful reform passed which isn't a reality with the current Congress.
Not really. Now he's just yet another candidate who has an issue they talk about more than the others. For Trump, it's immigration. For Sanders, it's wealth inequality.
Except he's a fringe candidate talking about an abstract issue which most people don't actually care about that much.
To wit: he should run for the House, or Senate, or he should support candidates who are in favor of overturning Citizens United (i.e., Democrats).
What if Lessig actually won? It wouldn't matter at all. You think the Republican Congress is going to pass sweeping campaign finance reform? Jesus Christ could return and be President and he wouldn't be able to make that happen, either. Lessig surely understands our system well enough to know this. So why is he doing this very expensive pretending that him being President will cause any change? If a Democrat in the White House could magically fix this, Obama would fix it right now.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/lessig-lawren...
And here was me thinking that was the Greeks. Thousands of years before America existed.
https://lessig2016.us/vote4vp/
I just love the idea of Neil deGrasse Tyson being president.
I mean, this is not a novel talking point. Does it really take an expert pollster to tell you that people like this message?
What makes more sense is to allow online voting (with appropriate safeguards) and then restructure the process so the votes actually mean something, i.e. break the two party system as a start.
In the Buridan's problem the solution is a timeout: if you haven't made a decision and can clearly see that the timeout has passed, you pick a certain predetermined decision (in this case the status quo).
Polling also prevents sybil attacks, ballot stuffing etc. and is impervious to voter turnouts.