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Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

330 points by bsimpson 11y ago

scrollaway 11y ago
Can someone give me a rundown of how anyone expected anything different to come out of this? Polling at 0% isn't exactly fixed by a televised debate. Sanders is competing with Hillary on a fairly close scale and yet a lot of people still say he has no chance (though I definitely think he does at this point, but I'm not a US citizen so...), so what could possibly happen with Lessig?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I'm not sure Lessig expected anything different to come out of this. Sometimes people run to draw attention to some ideas, rather than because they think they have a realistic chance. In other words, Lessig didn't need to win in order to win. (Whether he actually won, in the second sense, is a different question...)
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    I get what you're saying but, is that really the case? Did he "win"? Most people around the debate didn't even know there were more than 2-3 candidates; if you tell them about Lessig they'll ask you if that's a country or a city.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      I didn't say he "won". I said that he was trying to "win" rather than trying to win. I questioned whether he "won".
- WCityMike 11y ago
  As far as I understand, at least per Lessig's team: Dems said in order to participate in debate, you must poll 1% in three polls IN the six weeks prior to the debate. Depending on what polls were counted, Lessig either qualified or were one poll away from doing so. Dems then “clarified” rules as being 1% in three polls AT LEAST six weeks prior to the debate. HuffPo op-ed from Lessig's campaign manager: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-jarding/the-democrats-have-now-ch_b_8445202.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-jarding/the-democrats-ha...
  - mayneack 11y ago
    He also wasn't an option in many of the polls.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    Considering that the margin of error is usually around 3-4% for public opinion polls, a candidate whose best argument for inclusion is "I've been hovering at around one percent lately!" is going to have a tough row to hoe.
    - tanderson92 11y ago
      Perhaps then they should have made the threshold for qualifying higher? That argument sounds like the "Mike Goldman" side of the argument from the $5000 compression challenge.
- gkoberger 11y ago
  Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. I realize Sanders is less known for that and more known for democratic socialism, which is probably Lessig's hesitation. However, it always bothered me how little Lessig acknowledged the only candidate on either side with any chance of initiating campaign finance reform. If he really cared about campaign finance reform, he'd be out stumping for Sanders rather than this "running for president" publicity stunt. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_lessig_presidential_candidate_maybe/cuf6dzn https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_l... His Reddit answer boils down to "Bernie's plan won't work but I won't say why. My plan will work but I won't say way."
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - cmacpher 11y ago
    He still could. In the AMA he seems to like Sanders a bit, but Lessig advocated a different approach that he "thought" would be more effective. Now that Lessig has realized it didn't work, I wouldn't be surprised by an endorsement.
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    >Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not counting Lessig). No one seriously thinks that Lindsey Graham is going to be the nominee, nor did anyone think that he could be the nominee when he ran. He's a single issue candidate (national security) and his agenda is make sure this issue is discussed during the primaries. The same thing with Santorum and Huckabee ("traditional values"). It's not a new phenomenon. Back in 1988, Pat Robertson ran with a "Christian conservative" agenda, but no one seriously thought that he was going to be president. His role was to highlight the power of the conservative evangelical Christians in the Republican party, thus causing the eventual nominee to (and the party as a whole) to pay attention to their issues. There's nothing with this tactic, and it may even be effective. But it seems like it's more prominent on the national stage in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
- rflrob 11y ago
  By participating in the debate, presumably Lessig could have at least gotten his issue out there. As others pointed out months ago in reference to Sanders[1], a "win" wouldn't necessarily be getting the nomination, but in getting the nominee to endorse positions that they wouldn't have otherwise. [1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president-announcement-liberal-alternative-2016-democratic-primary/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president...
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  He could have at least gotten the chance to make it to the debate stage, spread knowledge of his issue and proposals, and gotten it absorbed by the other, more viable candidates.
- ermacaz 11y ago
  Its hard to poll above 0% when your only issue is being against freedom of speech
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Is that you, Citizens United?
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    Citizens United is not freedom of speech.
    - hugh4 11y ago
      The Supreme Court has held that it is, and if you want to argue against it then that's fine, but you need a better argument than "nuh uh". How many of the folks who argue against the Citizens United ruling have actually read it and understand the legal basis for it?
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        The Supreme Court also held that "Separate but Equal" was perfectly fine. They don't get things right all the time. And the argument is that money isn't speech.
        hugh4 11y ago
        The Supreme Court's job is to decide what laws are legal, not what they think the law ought to be. Deciding what the law ought to be is Congress's job. Do you suppose that nine Supreme Court justices might have considered and already dismissed your three-word argument in their lengthy decision on the subject?
    - Shivetya 11y ago
      Actually it is. For when you show willingness to silence one form of speech by anyone you forever give up your right to form any association to do similar. While many of us do not like all the money in politics how people assemble to pool that money should not be the concern. The concern should be and always should be how politicians routinely ignore the rule of law and Constitution and twist the words to deliver the outcome they desire. If anything, they would love restricting who can put money into politics as all their personal avenues of funding are protected.
- mtgx 11y ago
  I would've liked him to participate in at least one debate to discuss the corruption of money in politics. Unfortunately, even if they would've allowed him in the first debate, he totally murdered that chance by saying he will quit as soon as he fixes this issue. Even if he really wanted to do that, he would be lucky if he solved that issue in one mandate, making it completely unnecessary to announce before even the first debate that he would quit during his first mandate. So it seems Lessig isn't a great politician, but I still think he's a great activist for this issue.
dangerlibrary 11y ago
That was inevitable. It's a shame, too - he's not wrong, he's just underfunded and naive.
- smt88 11y ago
  We need naive people, or nothing would ever change. Maybe Lessig will be long dead before Citizens United is overturned, but his work could still pave the way for the people who overturn it.
bruceb 11y ago
Good cause but wrong candidate. Also hard to ask people to vote for you when you say you will quit after getting elected.
nostromo 11y ago
Honestly, his plan never made sense. Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  That's true of Sanders, too.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    And also of every other candidate for any office within the executive branch. Those wanting to counteract Citizens United would have to run for legislative office instead. But those races have less media visibility, especially in gerrymandered safe districts or primary races against an entrenched incumbent. People run for President of the U.S. to parlay some of their popularity or notoriety into slight changes to their party's platform, or to implicitly nominate themselves for another executive position, like vice president or cabinet member.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    Except that Sanders has street cred. You know, his entire life has been in politics, and Dems don't want a naive semi-outsider this time (for some Obama has been a let-down).
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      He may not be naive, but he's still a semi-outsider, isn't he? I mean, technically, he's not even a Democrat.
- aamar 11y ago
  Why not? His plan[1] isn't to overturn or defy Citizens United; he wants to modify and enhance public funding of elections so that it doesn't pay (in general) for Congress to spend time fundraising. Also, the plan doesn't have broad support in Congress, but it is plausible; there are many in both parties who support it. Some cities and states[2] have viable parallel legislation enacted or in progress. [1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/new-york-public-financing https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/new-york-public-financi...
Navarr 11y ago
This link doesn't work for me (completely blank page) and his Facebook page doesn't say anything about him dropping out. (For those curious: from the US, using Chrome, no ad or privacy block - Facebook is outputting 21 lines of HTML and then nothing. Looks like PHP is just dying for some reason)
- schackbrian 11y ago
  http://www.npr.org/2015/11/02/453980015/campaign-finance-crusader-lawrence-lessig-ends-presidential-bid http://www.npr.org/2015/11/02/453980015/campaign-finance-cru...
- bsimpson 11y ago
  It still works for me. The tl;dw is that the Democrats changed their debate qualification threshold from polling at 1+% < 6 weeks before the debate to polling at 1+% > 6 weeks before the debate. This means Lessig went from probably-in-the-next-debate to definitely-not. He figured if the Democrats are actively changing their rules to disqualify him, his effort is probably best spent on things other than running for a primary that doesn't want to include him.
- timothya 11y ago
  It works if you log out. Or watch the version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IsqmMqCEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IsqmMqCEo
michael_nielsen 11y ago
With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
- smacktoward 11y ago
  God, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for "l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun. Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.
dankohn1 11y ago
I supported Lessig's presidential campaign monetarily, even though I never thought he had a snowball's chance and also didn't think that his model of affecting change was fully thought through. As entrepreneurs, I think many of us can sympathize with the idea of knowing that there is a huge, massive problem that needs to be fixed, without necessarily having the solution fully formed. It would have been so easy for Lessig to coast on the reputation of his extraordinary work with Creative Commons [0] and his professorship at Harvard. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) identified one of the greatest challenges of our time, political corruption. His first proposed solution, the MAYDAY PACn [1] (A SuperPAC to end SuperPACs), was a brilliant idea and an abject failure. So was his second, which was this presidential campaign. It is incorrect to say that he never had a chance, since you can see how close he was in polling [2] to qualifying for the debate, and getting into the debate would have had a huge impact on awareness of his ideas and potential solutions. I do complain that he had fallen for the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency [3], instead of understanding the complexity required for real change. But, I give him huge props for trying both of these approaches, and I can't wait to see what his third attempt to take on political corruption will be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC [2] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-democratic-primary#!maxpct=60&mindate=2015-09-01&smoothing=less&showpoints=yes&estimate=custom&selected=Biden,Clinton,Lessig,Sanders http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-d... [3] http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Serious question: given that he didn't have a snowball's chance, why did you give him money, as opposed to giving money to some other change agent that does have a chance?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Sometimes its about sending a message. After all, its not a horse race; you don't win any prize by backing the winner.
PythonicAlpha 11y ago
As much I see, just to few people in the world today have the interest and the capabilities to uphold the democracies of this world. This is the plain reason, corporations and big pockets can convert the democracies of the world into support organizations for profits. I see it in my country also. The big corporations more and more often make contracts with the government which nobody in the government understand and where in the aftermath the country was shortchanged in one or the other way and they don't come out of these contracts, where profits is guaranteed even when the people lose. TTIP and the like are also a great, global way to destroy public control of the countries. Instead, profits will be guaranteed.
Quanticles 11y ago
This election cycle is making it clear that the democratic party leadership believes in "the ends justify the means". They want a democrat to win the presidency, so they don't want anyone to detract from Hillary and are making things harder for everyone else.
tinco 11y ago
I'm not a citizen of the U.S. so maybe I'm missing something. Why is he not just switching to the Republican party? What's this nonsense about his ideals being more in line with the democrats? I thought the Republicans were all about the founding fathers and making sure the United States are not ruled by the old-rich?
- deleted 11y ago
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- beat 11y ago
  Contrary to the other reply, the Democratic and Republican parties are extremely different. It's very unusual for someone to feel comfortable just switching from one to the other suddenly. And don't confuse rhetoric with reality. The Republican Party is pro-business and, more importantly, anti-government - almost anarchists these days. Lessig's dreams of regulating campaign spending by corporations and the wealthy fly directly in the face of what the GOP really cares about these days.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    > The Republican Party is pro-business and, more importantly, anti-government That's the theory, but often not the practice. The Republican Party often favors bigger government, they just disagree about what to spend it on. Neither party is particularly small-government anymore.
    - beat 11y ago
      Yeah, I can agree with that. I think it's a matter of interpretation. While they latch on to big-government things, the language is a phrasing of hostility, and the governing is borderline sabotage and hostage-taking. The shutdown crises suck.
      - EdSharkey 11y ago
        Yeah, they sortof suck, but we're 20T in the hole and 9% of the federal budget goes to debt service. That sucks more! When do the rabble on the right who instigate these debt showdowns get to be the righteous good guys instead of demons? Do we really need to spiral down to some catastrophe before we wake up and make a change here? It's the banksters accumulating most of the power with this debt here. I suspect the left will do the opposite of what should be done and install more growth-slowing policies and spend even more rapidly than the establishment republicans have.
vvpan 11y ago
Nobody in this thread seems to be talking about the strange change of rules by the Democrats. Why did this change in rules come about? As I understand it was a retroactive change? Very odd.
- AlwaysBCoding 11y ago
  Um... Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, was the co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. It's no secret she wants Hillary to win the nomination. It's actually a pretty fucked up system. The rules for qualification into the debates are decided by Wasserman Schultz and her alone, so the "rules" end up being in practice "will this make Hillary Clinton look good or bad?". Lessig's inclusion ran the risk of making Hillary look bad - by calling her out on her corporate donors - so he was excluded. Clearly this is not how we should have public debates about the future of our country. For what it's worth, Wasserman Schultz is already under fire for restricting the Democrats to only 6 national debates. Almost every other executive in the party thought this was a bad move since it gives the Republicans significantly more airtime, but remember the rules are decided by Hillary Clinton's campaign co-chair. Also Trump just called her out, which is pretty funny. http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neurotic-debbie-wasserman-schultz-shes-a-terrible-person/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neu... I don't think she's going to keep her job.
  - beat 11y ago
    What's interesting is that even Hillary is now complaining about the minimal debate schedule. It's denying Democrats a chance to make their case, not just to undecided Democratic primary voters, but to the nation in general. It rings even more true after the superb first debate, which made Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Martin O'Malley all look really great (and with Webb and Chaffee both dropped out, future debates will be even better). I think some of the poor decision-making for the restricted debate schedule was a reaction to 2008, when Democrats had 25 debates. It was distracting and exhausting. We're seeing it in comparison here, where the Republicans have far more candidates and a much busier debate schedule, which is winning them a lot of attention outside of Republican circles.
tptacek 11y ago
He hasn't ended his Presidential campaign. He's ended his bid for the Democratic nomination. David Weigel at WaPo asked him if he would run (pointlessly) as an independent; Lessig would (unsurprisingly) not rule that out. Note that he is still taking donations.
- morgante 11y ago
  I really, really hope he doesn't. That will destroy any goodwill I ever held towards him. My only consolation is that his campaign is such an abject failure that it probably can't even function as a spoiler.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Why? He's not going to get any noticeable amount of votes and won't cause any damage to another candidate.
    - morgante 11y ago
      That's the consolation, but there's always the risk that he actually somehow manages to win over a few percent.
    - Bud 11y ago
      It has only been 15 years since Ralph Nader got W elected for two terms and cost us about $10 trillion in stupid wars and bad economic decisions, and just about destroyed the US economy to boot. Do you already need yet another new lesson on why Lessig running as an independent could easily be disastrous? Really?
      - jonknee 11y ago
        The big difference is Ralph Nader had people who wanted to vote for him, Lessig does not.
      - jfager 11y ago
        The person Lessig would theoretically be Nadering, you do realize that as a Senator she voted on the wrong side of all of those bad things you're pointing out, right?
beat 11y ago
As much as I love Lawrence Lessig, I'm glad for this. "Celebrity single-issue candidate" is a poor role for him, a terrible waste of his talents. He deserves better, and the Democratic Party would do well to recognize him for it. An explicit, high profile advisory role for either Bernie or Hillary (or whoever wins the nomination) would be fantastic. Maybe even a Cabinet seat. But president? What's that supposed to accomplish? If you can't break out of the nerd ghetto, it's not relevant.
- bsimpson 11y ago
  My biggest concern is that the only official job of the President is to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Lessig is a fantastic policy wonk, but a single-issue candidate has no business leading the military, even though that was effectively the job he was going out for.
vonklaus 11y ago
I find it odd the role that would be 'secretary of technology' in the cabinet is distributed across many places. someone like Lessig would be a good fit in a role like that.
studentrob 11y ago
I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics. I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority. I'm also very pro free speech on the individual level. And I feel if I ran my own company I would want to be able to advertise and even lobby for policies in which I believe. Yet sometimes wealth comes from being at the right place at the right time, or wealth grows on wealth. And, in the interest of advancing society, I am not okay with our representatives being elected based on who threw them the most money. It's supposed to be one person one vote, not one dollar one vote. Still, even without the super PACs, won't corporations simply find another way to spend money to influence politics? Is this how it worked before 2010? Do we benefit from the the current system by being able to actually track the donations? Does anyone know in detail the solution Sanders or others have in mind?
- tptacek 11y ago
  Sanders supports a Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate campaign finance; in other words, Sanders would support the first Constitutional amendment in the history of the US to deliberately abridge the First Amendment, and would do so to regulate political speech.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    Thanks for your reply. So presumably this would bring us back to the state of things from 1971 with the entrance of the Federal Election Campaign Act, including the limitation on spending money on media? It sounds tricky. The most powerful thing about free speech is the right to say whatever you want about your government. But given the apparent level of corruption, maybe it's time to limit corporations' ability to make political speech. Is that what he's proposing? I read this on publicintegrity.org, > It wasn’t until 1971 that Congress got serious and passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, which required the full reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. It limited spending on media advertisements. But that portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional — and that actually opened the door for the Citizens United decision.
shmerl 11y ago
I think he chose the wrong party to begin with. He should push the Pirate Party in US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party
platz 11y ago
"The Democratic Party has required candidates receive at least 1 percent in three major national polls in the six weeks leading up to the debate in order to get a spot on the stage. But Lessig said the rules were changed last week, which would require those three polls to come prior to the six-week mark." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192
noelsusman 11y ago
The Democrats plan for victory is to appear less crazy to moderate voters than the Republicans. That's their biggest advantage right now. It's why they don't like Bernie Sanders and it's why they've constricted their debate schedule so much. They want to sit on the sidelines and let the Republican candidates make fools of themselves during primary season. Putting Lessig into the debate runs contrary to that plan. Besides, the "two polls have me at 1% and every other poll has me at 0%" argument isn't exactly a convincing case for inclusion.
- calvins 11y ago
  Meeting the rules for inclusion that were known by all parties (and were in fact used for the first debate) should have been all that was needed for Lessig's inclusion. This last-minute change of the rules to specifically exclude Lessig after it seemed he was going to meet the requirements is a disgrace.
EGreg 11y ago
Wish someone here knew Larry personally. Under the constitution, there is hardly any way to accomplish his reforms. However, you can accomplish an even more revolutionary change and benefit for the American people, by slowly phasing in public polling at the federal level. This is something the executive branch is able to do under the consitution. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212
13thLetter 11y ago
Lessig's actions in the past several years have been a major disappointment. I admired his work in pushing the copyright case (Eldred v. Ashcroft) all the way to the Supreme Court. Even though he lost, that at least got the issue into the media a little bit, something no one else has managed; that's something that could have been built upon. But instead of building on that and (for example) working with tech indistries to lobby for more sensible copyright legislation, he decided to go after a far more enormous and difficult task of somehow reforming the entire election system, something which I have to wonder if he even has any particular qualifications or experience to do. Then he decided that the way to accomplish that was to run for President, which is generally taken by the media and most people who follow politics as the sign of a crank. And now that's evaporated, as one would have expected, and we're back where we started. No Presidency, certainly no election law reform, and the same old awful copyright laws getting worse all the time.
- zeckalpha 11y ago
  He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign finance. Hence the pivot.
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    That's like pivoting from "I was unable to climb this mountain" to "I'll tear down this mountain with my bare hands." He switched from something achievable that he was qualified for to something immensely more difficult that he had no experience in. What's the result of that been? And, you know. Even if Citizens United is overturned (hooray! It'll once again be illegal to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton during an election! Joyous day!) Lessig's contribution to that is zero; that's going wherever it's going with or without him. It would have been better for all of us if he'd stuck with copyright where he could have made a difference.
    - zeckalpha 11y ago
      It's more like "I was unable to climb this mountain because I couldn't breathe" to "Let's pack oxygen tanks".
interesting_att 11y ago
It's a pity on how he started the campaign by saying he would resign after day 1. Looking at the public's interest in 'outsiders' this political season (Carson, Trump, Fiorina) and the lack of any real opposition towards Hillary outside of Bernie, Lessig actually did have a chance of getting his voice heard.
xcavier 11y ago
Spoken like an academic. He was never a serious contender. His angle was as an independent agitator. Ralph Nader was never a chance, but he changed America based on his campaign tactics (which I personally disagreed with - he split the Democratic vote). Lessig needs a dose of 'junkyard dog'. This setback could have been the fillip a better, more aggressive candidate would welcome.

330 points by bsimpson 11y ago

Can someone give me a rundown of how anyone expected anything different to come out of this? Polling at 0% isn't exactly fixed by a televised debate. Sanders is competing with Hillary on a fairly close scale and yet a lot of people still say he has no chance (though I definitely think he does at this point, but I'm not a US citizen so...), so what could possibly happen with Lessig?

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I'm not sure Lessig expected anything different to come out of this. Sometimes people run to draw attention to some ideas, rather than because they think they have a realistic chance. In other words, Lessig didn't need to win in order to win. (Whether he actually won, in the second sense, is a different question...)
- scrollaway 11y ago
  I get what you're saying but, is that really the case? Did he "win"? Most people around the debate didn't even know there were more than 2-3 candidates; if you tell them about Lessig they'll ask you if that's a country or a city.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    I didn't say he "won". I said that he was trying to "win" rather than trying to win. I questioned whether he "won".
WCityMike 11y ago
As far as I understand, at least per Lessig's team: Dems said in order to participate in debate, you must poll 1% in three polls IN the six weeks prior to the debate. Depending on what polls were counted, Lessig either qualified or were one poll away from doing so. Dems then “clarified” rules as being 1% in three polls AT LEAST six weeks prior to the debate. HuffPo op-ed from Lessig's campaign manager: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-jarding/the-democrats-have-now-ch_b_8445202.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-jarding/the-democrats-ha...
- mayneack 11y ago
  He also wasn't an option in many of the polls.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  Considering that the margin of error is usually around 3-4% for public opinion polls, a candidate whose best argument for inclusion is "I've been hovering at around one percent lately!" is going to have a tough row to hoe.
  - tanderson92 11y ago
    Perhaps then they should have made the threshold for qualifying higher? That argument sounds like the "Mike Goldman" side of the argument from the $5000 compression challenge.
gkoberger 11y ago
Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. I realize Sanders is less known for that and more known for democratic socialism, which is probably Lessig's hesitation. However, it always bothered me how little Lessig acknowledged the only candidate on either side with any chance of initiating campaign finance reform. If he really cared about campaign finance reform, he'd be out stumping for Sanders rather than this "running for president" publicity stunt. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_lessig_presidential_candidate_maybe/cuf6dzn https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_l... His Reddit answer boils down to "Bernie's plan won't work but I won't say why. My plan will work but I won't say way."
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- cmacpher 11y ago
  He still could. In the AMA he seems to like Sanders a bit, but Lessig advocated a different approach that he "thought" would be more effective. Now that Lessig has realized it didn't work, I wouldn't be surprised by an endorsement.
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  >Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not counting Lessig). No one seriously thinks that Lindsey Graham is going to be the nominee, nor did anyone think that he could be the nominee when he ran. He's a single issue candidate (national security) and his agenda is make sure this issue is discussed during the primaries. The same thing with Santorum and Huckabee ("traditional values"). It's not a new phenomenon. Back in 1988, Pat Robertson ran with a "Christian conservative" agenda, but no one seriously thought that he was going to be president. His role was to highlight the power of the conservative evangelical Christians in the Republican party, thus causing the eventual nominee to (and the party as a whole) to pay attention to their issues. There's nothing with this tactic, and it may even be effective. But it seems like it's more prominent on the national stage in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
rflrob 11y ago
By participating in the debate, presumably Lessig could have at least gotten his issue out there. As others pointed out months ago in reference to Sanders[1], a "win" wouldn't necessarily be getting the nomination, but in getting the nominee to endorse positions that they wouldn't have otherwise. [1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president-announcement-liberal-alternative-2016-democratic-primary/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president...
Apocryphon 11y ago
He could have at least gotten the chance to make it to the debate stage, spread knowledge of his issue and proposals, and gotten it absorbed by the other, more viable candidates.
ermacaz 11y ago
Its hard to poll above 0% when your only issue is being against freedom of speech
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Is that you, Citizens United?
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Citizens United is not freedom of speech.
  - hugh4 11y ago
    The Supreme Court has held that it is, and if you want to argue against it then that's fine, but you need a better argument than "nuh uh". How many of the folks who argue against the Citizens United ruling have actually read it and understand the legal basis for it?
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      The Supreme Court also held that "Separate but Equal" was perfectly fine. They don't get things right all the time. And the argument is that money isn't speech.
      - hugh4 11y ago
        The Supreme Court's job is to decide what laws are legal, not what they think the law ought to be. Deciding what the law ought to be is Congress's job. Do you suppose that nine Supreme Court justices might have considered and already dismissed your three-word argument in their lengthy decision on the subject?
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    Actually it is. For when you show willingness to silence one form of speech by anyone you forever give up your right to form any association to do similar. While many of us do not like all the money in politics how people assemble to pool that money should not be the concern. The concern should be and always should be how politicians routinely ignore the rule of law and Constitution and twist the words to deliver the outcome they desire. If anything, they would love restricting who can put money into politics as all their personal avenues of funding are protected.
mtgx 11y ago
I would've liked him to participate in at least one debate to discuss the corruption of money in politics. Unfortunately, even if they would've allowed him in the first debate, he totally murdered that chance by saying he will quit as soon as he fixes this issue. Even if he really wanted to do that, he would be lucky if he solved that issue in one mandate, making it completely unnecessary to announce before even the first debate that he would quit during his first mandate. So it seems Lessig isn't a great politician, but I still think he's a great activist for this issue.

dangerlibrary 11y ago

That was inevitable. It's a shame, too - he's not wrong, he's just underfunded and naive.

smt88 11y ago
We need naive people, or nothing would ever change. Maybe Lessig will be long dead before Citizens United is overturned, but his work could still pave the way for the people who overturn it.

bruceb 11y ago

Good cause but wrong candidate. Also hard to ask people to vote for you when you say you will quit after getting elected.

nostromo 11y ago

Honestly, his plan never made sense. Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
That's true of Sanders, too.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  And also of every other candidate for any office within the executive branch. Those wanting to counteract Citizens United would have to run for legislative office instead. But those races have less media visibility, especially in gerrymandered safe districts or primary races against an entrenched incumbent. People run for President of the U.S. to parlay some of their popularity or notoriety into slight changes to their party's platform, or to implicitly nominate themselves for another executive position, like vice president or cabinet member.
- r00fus 11y ago
  Except that Sanders has street cred. You know, his entire life has been in politics, and Dems don't want a naive semi-outsider this time (for some Obama has been a let-down).
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    He may not be naive, but he's still a semi-outsider, isn't he? I mean, technically, he's not even a Democrat.
aamar 11y ago
Why not? His plan[1] isn't to overturn or defy Citizens United; he wants to modify and enhance public funding of elections so that it doesn't pay (in general) for Congress to spend time fundraising. Also, the plan doesn't have broad support in Congress, but it is plausible; there are many in both parties who support it. Some cities and states[2] have viable parallel legislation enacted or in progress. [1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/new-york-public-financing https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/new-york-public-financi...

Navarr 11y ago

This link doesn't work for me (completely blank page) and his Facebook page doesn't say anything about him dropping out. (For those curious: from the US, using Chrome, no ad or privacy block - Facebook is outputting 21 lines of HTML and then nothing. Looks like PHP is just dying for some reason)

schackbrian 11y ago
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/02/453980015/campaign-finance-crusader-lawrence-lessig-ends-presidential-bid http://www.npr.org/2015/11/02/453980015/campaign-finance-cru...
bsimpson 11y ago
It still works for me. The tl;dw is that the Democrats changed their debate qualification threshold from polling at 1+% < 6 weeks before the debate to polling at 1+% > 6 weeks before the debate. This means Lessig went from probably-in-the-next-debate to definitely-not. He figured if the Democrats are actively changing their rules to disqualify him, his effort is probably best spent on things other than running for a primary that doesn't want to include him.
timothya 11y ago
It works if you log out. Or watch the version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IsqmMqCEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IsqmMqCEo

michael_nielsen 11y ago

With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

smacktoward 11y ago
God, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for "l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun. Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.

dankohn1 11y ago

I supported Lessig's presidential campaign monetarily, even though I never thought he had a snowball's chance and also didn't think that his model of affecting change was fully thought through. As entrepreneurs, I think many of us can sympathize with the idea of knowing that there is a huge, massive problem that needs to be fixed, without necessarily having the solution fully formed. It would have been so easy for Lessig to coast on the reputation of his extraordinary work with Creative Commons [0] and his professorship at Harvard. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) identified one of the greatest challenges of our time, political corruption. His first proposed solution, the MAYDAY PACn [1] (A SuperPAC to end SuperPACs), was a brilliant idea and an abject failure. So was his second, which was this presidential campaign. It is incorrect to say that he never had a chance, since you can see how close he was in polling [2] to qualifying for the debate, and getting into the debate would have had a huge impact on awareness of his ideas and potential solutions. I do complain that he had fallen for the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency [3], instead of understanding the complexity required for real change. But, I give him huge props for trying both of these approaches, and I can't wait to see what his third attempt to take on political corruption will be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC [2] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-democratic-primary#!maxpct=60&mindate=2015-09-01&smoothing=less&showpoints=yes&estimate=custom&selected=Biden,Clinton,Lessig,Sanders http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-d... [3] http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...

tptacek 11y ago
Serious question: given that he didn't have a snowball's chance, why did you give him money, as opposed to giving money to some other change agent that does have a chance?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Sometimes its about sending a message. After all, its not a horse race; you don't win any prize by backing the winner.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago

As much I see, just to few people in the world today have the interest and the capabilities to uphold the democracies of this world. This is the plain reason, corporations and big pockets can convert the democracies of the world into support organizations for profits. I see it in my country also. The big corporations more and more often make contracts with the government which nobody in the government understand and where in the aftermath the country was shortchanged in one or the other way and they don't come out of these contracts, where profits is guaranteed even when the people lose. TTIP and the like are also a great, global way to destroy public control of the countries. Instead, profits will be guaranteed.

Quanticles 11y ago

This election cycle is making it clear that the democratic party leadership believes in "the ends justify the means". They want a democrat to win the presidency, so they don't want anyone to detract from Hillary and are making things harder for everyone else.

tinco 11y ago

I'm not a citizen of the U.S. so maybe I'm missing something. Why is he not just switching to the Republican party? What's this nonsense about his ideals being more in line with the democrats? I thought the Republicans were all about the founding fathers and making sure the United States are not ruled by the old-rich?

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beat 11y ago
Contrary to the other reply, the Democratic and Republican parties are extremely different. It's very unusual for someone to feel comfortable just switching from one to the other suddenly. And don't confuse rhetoric with reality. The Republican Party is pro-business and, more importantly, anti-government - almost anarchists these days. Lessig's dreams of regulating campaign spending by corporations and the wealthy fly directly in the face of what the GOP really cares about these days.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > The Republican Party is pro-business and, more importantly, anti-government That's the theory, but often not the practice. The Republican Party often favors bigger government, they just disagree about what to spend it on. Neither party is particularly small-government anymore.
  - beat 11y ago
    Yeah, I can agree with that. I think it's a matter of interpretation. While they latch on to big-government things, the language is a phrasing of hostility, and the governing is borderline sabotage and hostage-taking. The shutdown crises suck.
    - EdSharkey 11y ago
      Yeah, they sortof suck, but we're 20T in the hole and 9% of the federal budget goes to debt service. That sucks more! When do the rabble on the right who instigate these debt showdowns get to be the righteous good guys instead of demons? Do we really need to spiral down to some catastrophe before we wake up and make a change here? It's the banksters accumulating most of the power with this debt here. I suspect the left will do the opposite of what should be done and install more growth-slowing policies and spend even more rapidly than the establishment republicans have.

vvpan 11y ago

Nobody in this thread seems to be talking about the strange change of rules by the Democrats. Why did this change in rules come about? As I understand it was a retroactive change? Very odd.

AlwaysBCoding 11y ago
Um... Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, was the co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. It's no secret she wants Hillary to win the nomination. It's actually a pretty fucked up system. The rules for qualification into the debates are decided by Wasserman Schultz and her alone, so the "rules" end up being in practice "will this make Hillary Clinton look good or bad?". Lessig's inclusion ran the risk of making Hillary look bad - by calling her out on her corporate donors - so he was excluded. Clearly this is not how we should have public debates about the future of our country. For what it's worth, Wasserman Schultz is already under fire for restricting the Democrats to only 6 national debates. Almost every other executive in the party thought this was a bad move since it gives the Republicans significantly more airtime, but remember the rules are decided by Hillary Clinton's campaign co-chair. Also Trump just called her out, which is pretty funny. http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neurotic-debbie-wasserman-schultz-shes-a-terrible-person/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neu... I don't think she's going to keep her job.
- beat 11y ago
  What's interesting is that even Hillary is now complaining about the minimal debate schedule. It's denying Democrats a chance to make their case, not just to undecided Democratic primary voters, but to the nation in general. It rings even more true after the superb first debate, which made Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Martin O'Malley all look really great (and with Webb and Chaffee both dropped out, future debates will be even better). I think some of the poor decision-making for the restricted debate schedule was a reaction to 2008, when Democrats had 25 debates. It was distracting and exhausting. We're seeing it in comparison here, where the Republicans have far more candidates and a much busier debate schedule, which is winning them a lot of attention outside of Republican circles.

tptacek 11y ago

He hasn't ended his Presidential campaign. He's ended his bid for the Democratic nomination. David Weigel at WaPo asked him if he would run (pointlessly) as an independent; Lessig would (unsurprisingly) not rule that out. Note that he is still taking donations.

morgante 11y ago
I really, really hope he doesn't. That will destroy any goodwill I ever held towards him. My only consolation is that his campaign is such an abject failure that it probably can't even function as a spoiler.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Why? He's not going to get any noticeable amount of votes and won't cause any damage to another candidate.
  - morgante 11y ago
    That's the consolation, but there's always the risk that he actually somehow manages to win over a few percent.
  - Bud 11y ago
    It has only been 15 years since Ralph Nader got W elected for two terms and cost us about $10 trillion in stupid wars and bad economic decisions, and just about destroyed the US economy to boot. Do you already need yet another new lesson on why Lessig running as an independent could easily be disastrous? Really?
    - jonknee 11y ago
      The big difference is Ralph Nader had people who wanted to vote for him, Lessig does not.
    - jfager 11y ago
      The person Lessig would theoretically be Nadering, you do realize that as a Senator she voted on the wrong side of all of those bad things you're pointing out, right?

beat 11y ago

As much as I love Lawrence Lessig, I'm glad for this. "Celebrity single-issue candidate" is a poor role for him, a terrible waste of his talents. He deserves better, and the Democratic Party would do well to recognize him for it. An explicit, high profile advisory role for either Bernie or Hillary (or whoever wins the nomination) would be fantastic. Maybe even a Cabinet seat. But president? What's that supposed to accomplish? If you can't break out of the nerd ghetto, it's not relevant.

bsimpson 11y ago
My biggest concern is that the only official job of the President is to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Lessig is a fantastic policy wonk, but a single-issue candidate has no business leading the military, even though that was effectively the job he was going out for.

vonklaus 11y ago

I find it odd the role that would be 'secretary of technology' in the cabinet is distributed across many places. someone like Lessig would be a good fit in a role like that.

studentrob 11y ago

I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics. I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority. I'm also very pro free speech on the individual level. And I feel if I ran my own company I would want to be able to advertise and even lobby for policies in which I believe. Yet sometimes wealth comes from being at the right place at the right time, or wealth grows on wealth. And, in the interest of advancing society, I am not okay with our representatives being elected based on who threw them the most money. It's supposed to be one person one vote, not one dollar one vote. Still, even without the super PACs, won't corporations simply find another way to spend money to influence politics? Is this how it worked before 2010? Do we benefit from the the current system by being able to actually track the donations? Does anyone know in detail the solution Sanders or others have in mind?

tptacek 11y ago
Sanders supports a Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate campaign finance; in other words, Sanders would support the first Constitutional amendment in the history of the US to deliberately abridge the First Amendment, and would do so to regulate political speech.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Thanks for your reply. So presumably this would bring us back to the state of things from 1971 with the entrance of the Federal Election Campaign Act, including the limitation on spending money on media? It sounds tricky. The most powerful thing about free speech is the right to say whatever you want about your government. But given the apparent level of corruption, maybe it's time to limit corporations' ability to make political speech. Is that what he's proposing? I read this on publicintegrity.org, > It wasn’t until 1971 that Congress got serious and passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, which required the full reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. It limited spending on media advertisements. But that portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional — and that actually opened the door for the Citizens United decision.

shmerl 11y ago

I think he chose the wrong party to begin with. He should push the Pirate Party in US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party

platz 11y ago

"The Democratic Party has required candidates receive at least 1 percent in three major national polls in the six weeks leading up to the debate in order to get a spot on the stage. But Lessig said the rules were changed last week, which would require those three polls to come prior to the six-week mark." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192

noelsusman 11y ago

The Democrats plan for victory is to appear less crazy to moderate voters than the Republicans. That's their biggest advantage right now. It's why they don't like Bernie Sanders and it's why they've constricted their debate schedule so much. They want to sit on the sidelines and let the Republican candidates make fools of themselves during primary season. Putting Lessig into the debate runs contrary to that plan. Besides, the "two polls have me at 1% and every other poll has me at 0%" argument isn't exactly a convincing case for inclusion.

calvins 11y ago
Meeting the rules for inclusion that were known by all parties (and were in fact used for the first debate) should have been all that was needed for Lessig's inclusion. This last-minute change of the rules to specifically exclude Lessig after it seemed he was going to meet the requirements is a disgrace.

EGreg 11y ago

Wish someone here knew Larry personally. Under the constitution, there is hardly any way to accomplish his reforms. However, you can accomplish an even more revolutionary change and benefit for the American people, by slowly phasing in public polling at the federal level. This is something the executive branch is able to do under the consitution. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212

13thLetter 11y ago

Lessig's actions in the past several years have been a major disappointment. I admired his work in pushing the copyright case (Eldred v. Ashcroft) all the way to the Supreme Court. Even though he lost, that at least got the issue into the media a little bit, something no one else has managed; that's something that could have been built upon. But instead of building on that and (for example) working with tech indistries to lobby for more sensible copyright legislation, he decided to go after a far more enormous and difficult task of somehow reforming the entire election system, something which I have to wonder if he even has any particular qualifications or experience to do. Then he decided that the way to accomplish that was to run for President, which is generally taken by the media and most people who follow politics as the sign of a crank. And now that's evaporated, as one would have expected, and we're back where we started. No Presidency, certainly no election law reform, and the same old awful copyright laws getting worse all the time.

zeckalpha 11y ago
He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign finance. Hence the pivot.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  That's like pivoting from "I was unable to climb this mountain" to "I'll tear down this mountain with my bare hands." He switched from something achievable that he was qualified for to something immensely more difficult that he had no experience in. What's the result of that been? And, you know. Even if Citizens United is overturned (hooray! It'll once again be illegal to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton during an election! Joyous day!) Lessig's contribution to that is zero; that's going wherever it's going with or without him. It would have been better for all of us if he'd stuck with copyright where he could have made a difference.
  - zeckalpha 11y ago
    It's more like "I was unable to climb this mountain because I couldn't breathe" to "Let's pack oxygen tanks".

interesting_att 11y ago

It's a pity on how he started the campaign by saying he would resign after day 1. Looking at the public's interest in 'outsiders' this political season (Carson, Trump, Fiorina) and the lack of any real opposition towards Hillary outside of Bernie, Lessig actually did have a chance of getting his voice heard.

xcavier 11y ago

Spoken like an academic. He was never a serious contender. His angle was as an independent agitator. Ralph Nader was never a chance, but he changed America based on his campaign tactics (which I personally disagreed with - he split the Democratic vote). Lessig needs a dose of 'junkyard dog'. This setback could have been the fillip a better, more aggressive candidate would welcome.