6 ms·

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

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
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
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.
- gee_totes 11y ago
  As much as I hate to defend Lindsey Graham, I honestly think he's running for the VP slot. He would make an appealing VP for the Republican base -- hawkish on defense and a veteran of senate dealmaking.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Not that I think he was looking to get put into a hypothetical future Democratic cabinet, but where could he have ended up at, had he greater visibility? Supreme Court? DoJ?
  - dluan 11y ago
    Lessig running not as a VP, but to get his podium into the next White House seems like a worthwhile shot.
  - ermacaz 11y ago
    And he also is against free speech, perhaps they should run together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSV6iqxL2s0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSV6iqxL2s0
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    That is one of the analyses I've heard. The other is that he's playing a bit of a coach, making the eventual nominee hone his foreign policy prior to the general. The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  The difference is really the level of popular support. Even Graham and Santorum, who weren't even on the "main stage" of the recent GOP debate, have won U.S. Senate elections and have national name recognition that far outstrips Lessig. Lessig seems to think that if he eked his way onto the stage of a televised Democratic debate, he'd have a chance of jump-starting a national political campaign on the issue of campaign finance. But it's actually the reverse: you only get onto a debate stage if you already have a campaign. The polling criteria is not a gotcha. It's just the easiest way to ensure that only people with actual popular traction get stage time. The debate is not intended to be a "big intro" opportunity. There are other events for that, like the convention (Obama), or big events like the Prayer Breakfast (Ben Carson). In part the difference in the numbers between the parties is simply that there is no clear favorite on the GOP side, while there is an overwhelming favorite on the Dem side. There are a lot of senior Democrats who have chosen to sit this one out rather than challenge Hillary.
WildUtah 11y ago
Lessig's agenda wasn't to overturn Citizens United, it was public financing of campaigns. Nobody --not Sanders nor Lessig -- is going to push that through Congress any time soon. Citizens United is probably doomed under Clinton if she's elected, no less than under Sanders. Demographically Kennedy, Scalia, or Thomas is likely to be replaced in the next five years and very likely in the next nine and CU hangs by a single vote on the Supreme Court. Of course, reversing CU will actually make things worse from Lessig's stated perspective. With less independent money and with outside voices silenced, politicians will either be more entrenched with special interests or forced to spend even more time raising money from business executives. Unless you have a full restructuring of the system with public financing, most any plausible change isn't going to improve things.
zeveb 11y ago
> Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. Repealing the First Amendment is a tremendously weighty decision, and not one whose prospect should fill anyone with optimism.
- Bud 11y ago
  Nobody mentioned repealing the First Amendment. It would be quite easy to overturn Citizens United, a weak 5-4 decision borne of highly-questionable provenance, without touching the First Amendment in any way.
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    The plaintiffs in Citizens United, lest we forget, wanted to be permitted to release a movie critical of a presidential candidate during an election. If that is made illegal again, that strikes me as being quite definitely against the spirit of the First Amendment.
    - Bud 11y ago
      Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around and run infinite quantities of ads with infinite anonymous funding for said ads, too, to support "Hillary: The Movie", which wasn't actually a movie that they wanted to release, btw, it was actually a big long TV ad. Come on, at least be intellectually honest. They wanted to shadow-fund a TV ad campaign. Clever of you to leave those facts out!
      - 13thLetter 11y ago
        "Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around" Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?
        Bud 11y ago
        Once again, you conveniently leave out the key part of the comment in question: the source of the funding. Citizens United wasn't about speech. It was about unlimited anonymous money flooding our elections. Nothing is wrong with criticizing a politician. That's obvious. But thanks for the clumsy obfuscation attempt.
gre 11y ago
People decry career politicians and wish for an alternative, and when we finally get an outsider like Lessig to run and he's weak and apologetic about what he'd do if he won (pass some reforms, step down). That's such bullshit, he should have run like anyone else and then I would have supported him. It's his own fault for being weak.
blakeyrat 11y ago
Lessig didn't (just) want to overturn Citizens United, he wanted to make campaigns publicly financed. Meaning: the Government will spend your tax money to buy advertisements for politicians. I think that's a terrible idea, and as long as Lessig is flogging it, he won't get my support.
- dibujante 11y ago
  We have public election funding in Canada and it has ushered in the end of days. The voteman came for my last neighbour yesterday. I am certain he will come for me soon. I will save the last bullet for myself. Let this be a lesson to all those who are tempted by public election financing.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  Yes, please spend my tax money so you can do you job, write laws that serve my interests. Please stop spending most of your time chasing special interests for money, stop writing laws that serve the needs of those special interests over mine. That is exactly what I want. Why do you think it is a terrible idea? I'd eve hazard a guess that the money we save from reducing tax loop holes, bad contracts, subsidies and other pork could cover much of the cost of the public funding.
nl 11y ago
Firstly: I'm not in the US, and fairly left leaning even for someone outside the US. That said: I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided. I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard. I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong speech: if people are pushing political agendas using things that are factually incorrect that should be restricted. IANAL, but I think that this is likely to be more legally achievable in the US too: IS libel laws have a model of truth as a defense, and it seems to me this could be a framework for regulating false political speech.
- danbmil99 11y ago
  Your proposal would run smack up against the First Amendment. Both right and left will will reject any sort of speech control out of hand here in the USA.
  - nl 11y ago
    Maybe. But if you can explain how overturning Citizen's United wouldn't run into that problem while this idea I'd find that helpful. OTOH, Libel in the US is already a thing. I'm saying extending those laws to make "the American people" a group that has standing, and falsehoods something that has harm. There is some existing precedent for that under libel.
    - hackerboos 11y ago
      The problem with CU isn't the 1st Amendment, it's corporate personhood and the press. It's easy to argue that corporations and unions don't deserve free speech as their directors, employees and members are all entitled to free speech individually. However the press is different. Nobody, rightly so, wants to limit the press to say and print whatever they like (so long as it's not slander/libel) and today's press is made up of corporations. How do we keep a free press and silence other corporations?
      - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

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.

gee_totes 11y ago
As much as I hate to defend Lindsey Graham, I honestly think he's running for the VP slot. He would make an appealing VP for the Republican base -- hawkish on defense and a veteran of senate dealmaking.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Not that I think he was looking to get put into a hypothetical future Democratic cabinet, but where could he have ended up at, had he greater visibility? Supreme Court? DoJ?
- dluan 11y ago
  Lessig running not as a VP, but to get his podium into the next White House seems like a worthwhile shot.
- ermacaz 11y ago
  And he also is against free speech, perhaps they should run together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSV6iqxL2s0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSV6iqxL2s0
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  That is one of the analyses I've heard. The other is that he's playing a bit of a coach, making the eventual nominee hone his foreign policy prior to the general. The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.
snowwrestler 11y ago
The difference is really the level of popular support. Even Graham and Santorum, who weren't even on the "main stage" of the recent GOP debate, have won U.S. Senate elections and have national name recognition that far outstrips Lessig. Lessig seems to think that if he eked his way onto the stage of a televised Democratic debate, he'd have a chance of jump-starting a national political campaign on the issue of campaign finance. But it's actually the reverse: you only get onto a debate stage if you already have a campaign. The polling criteria is not a gotcha. It's just the easiest way to ensure that only people with actual popular traction get stage time. The debate is not intended to be a "big intro" opportunity. There are other events for that, like the convention (Obama), or big events like the Prayer Breakfast (Ben Carson). In part the difference in the numbers between the parties is simply that there is no clear favorite on the GOP side, while there is an overwhelming favorite on the Dem side. There are a lot of senior Democrats who have chosen to sit this one out rather than challenge Hillary.

WildUtah 11y ago

Lessig's agenda wasn't to overturn Citizens United, it was public financing of campaigns. Nobody --not Sanders nor Lessig -- is going to push that through Congress any time soon. Citizens United is probably doomed under Clinton if she's elected, no less than under Sanders. Demographically Kennedy, Scalia, or Thomas is likely to be replaced in the next five years and very likely in the next nine and CU hangs by a single vote on the Supreme Court. Of course, reversing CU will actually make things worse from Lessig's stated perspective. With less independent money and with outside voices silenced, politicians will either be more entrenched with special interests or forced to spend even more time raising money from business executives. Unless you have a full restructuring of the system with public financing, most any plausible change isn't going to improve things.

zeveb 11y ago

> Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. Repealing the First Amendment is a tremendously weighty decision, and not one whose prospect should fill anyone with optimism.

Bud 11y ago
Nobody mentioned repealing the First Amendment. It would be quite easy to overturn Citizens United, a weak 5-4 decision borne of highly-questionable provenance, without touching the First Amendment in any way.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  The plaintiffs in Citizens United, lest we forget, wanted to be permitted to release a movie critical of a presidential candidate during an election. If that is made illegal again, that strikes me as being quite definitely against the spirit of the First Amendment.
  - Bud 11y ago
    Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around and run infinite quantities of ads with infinite anonymous funding for said ads, too, to support "Hillary: The Movie", which wasn't actually a movie that they wanted to release, btw, it was actually a big long TV ad. Come on, at least be intellectually honest. They wanted to shadow-fund a TV ad campaign. Clever of you to leave those facts out!
    - 13thLetter 11y ago
      "Lest you forget, the plaintiffs wanted to bash Hillary Clinton around" Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?
      - Bud 11y ago
        Once again, you conveniently leave out the key part of the comment in question: the source of the funding. Citizens United wasn't about speech. It was about unlimited anonymous money flooding our elections. Nothing is wrong with criticizing a politician. That's obvious. But thanks for the clumsy obfuscation attempt.

gre 11y ago

People decry career politicians and wish for an alternative, and when we finally get an outsider like Lessig to run and he's weak and apologetic about what he'd do if he won (pass some reforms, step down). That's such bullshit, he should have run like anyone else and then I would have supported him. It's his own fault for being weak.

blakeyrat 11y ago

Lessig didn't (just) want to overturn Citizens United, he wanted to make campaigns publicly financed. Meaning: the Government will spend your tax money to buy advertisements for politicians. I think that's a terrible idea, and as long as Lessig is flogging it, he won't get my support.

dibujante 11y ago
We have public election funding in Canada and it has ushered in the end of days. The voteman came for my last neighbour yesterday. I am certain he will come for me soon. I will save the last bullet for myself. Let this be a lesson to all those who are tempted by public election financing.
shkkmo 11y ago
Yes, please spend my tax money so you can do you job, write laws that serve my interests. Please stop spending most of your time chasing special interests for money, stop writing laws that serve the needs of those special interests over mine. That is exactly what I want. Why do you think it is a terrible idea? I'd eve hazard a guess that the money we save from reducing tax loop holes, bad contracts, subsidies and other pork could cover much of the cost of the public funding.

nl 11y ago

Firstly: I'm not in the US, and fairly left leaning even for someone outside the US. That said: I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided. I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard. I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong speech: if people are pushing political agendas using things that are factually incorrect that should be restricted. IANAL, but I think that this is likely to be more legally achievable in the US too: IS libel laws have a model of truth as a defense, and it seems to me this could be a framework for regulating false political speech.

danbmil99 11y ago
Your proposal would run smack up against the First Amendment. Both right and left will will reject any sort of speech control out of hand here in the USA.
- nl 11y ago
  Maybe. But if you can explain how overturning Citizen's United wouldn't run into that problem while this idea I'd find that helpful. OTOH, Libel in the US is already a thing. I'm saying extending those laws to make "the American people" a group that has standing, and falsehoods something that has harm. There is some existing precedent for that under libel.
  - hackerboos 11y ago
    The problem with CU isn't the 1st Amendment, it's corporate personhood and the press. It's easy to argue that corporations and unions don't deserve free speech as their directors, employees and members are all entitled to free speech individually. However the press is different. Nobody, rightly so, wants to limit the press to say and print whatever they like (so long as it's not slander/libel) and today's press is made up of corporations. How do we keep a free press and silence other corporations?
    - 11y ago