
Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign - bsimpson
https://www.facebook.com/Lessig2016/videos/vb.832686670149581/909929802425267/?type=2&theater
======
dankohn1
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-d...](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)
[3] [http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-
theor...](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-
the-presidency-explained)

~~~
tptacek
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
Sometimes its about sending a message. After all, its not a horse race; you
don't win any prize by backing the winner.

~~~
tptacek
Is that why you supported Lessig?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's why I support {whomever}. Marginally my vote/money is worth more by
supporting an outlier.

------
michael_nielsen
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
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
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.

~~~
tptacek
Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take
action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-
advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the
virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives
people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs.

Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns
out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.

~~~
jacobolus
I also think Lessig’s campaign was an absurdity.

But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far _far_ below your usual
standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush’s election
is pretty weak sauce.

You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn’t resign,
everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush’s actions, foreign heads of
state who went along and everyone at the UN who took the Americans WMD claims
at face value, the entirety of the mainstream US media including especially
the New York Times, the previous several Republican presidents who set the
stage in the Middle East, US and international oil companies, the Saudis, etc.

Or if we’re just talking about the Bush/Gore election, how about blaming the
Supreme Court who decided the election 5:4, Gore who gave up instead of
fighting more about it, all the local officials around the country who
supported efforts to disenfranchise voters, whoever designed that “butterfly
ballot”, all the people in aggregate who voted for Bush or any of the above
members of Congress, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in congress who were such
opportunistic spineless SOBs that folks on the left spent years thoroughly fed
up with them, whoever was running Gore’s ineffective grassroots campaign/GOTV
efforts and did a terrible job of convincing anyone that he’d be at all
different than Clinton, etc.

~~~
chillwaves
When a team wins in football, don't you only count the final field goal that
decided the game? Or do the other 60 minutes count too?

Gore lost his home state but Nader cost him the election. Gore wanted a
partial recount in Florida (when a full recount would have been in his favor)
but Nader cost him the election.

Curse those Green party voters for not falling in line!

~~~
tptacek
Nader sapped support from Gore throughout the entire election.

Again, the problem isn't that it's wrong to run for President. The issue is
that if you _know_ you're pulling support in a close election, _and_ you have
no chance of winning, then it becomes legitimate to ask whether the point
you're trying to make by running is worth the cost.

~~~
wfo
Our electoral system is broken in that it doesn't allow voters to reasonably
express preferences which aren't one of the two mainstream options because of
this spoiler effect. I'm not sure what the correct answer is, to complain
about how "both parties are terrible" and vote for the mainstream party anyway
and get more of the same and know that it will never change or to vote how you
actually feel knowing that the system is rigged against allowing you to do
that. I can't really fault someone for doing either.

~~~
tptacek
I agree that our system is broken, but that's not news, and when you take
actions within that system that cause harm, you remain culpable for the harm;
you can't just appeal to a different electoral system.

------
scrollaway
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?

~~~
gkoberger
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_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_lessig_presidential_candidate_maybe/cuf6dzn)

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."

~~~
jonathankoren
>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
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.

~~~
jonathankoren
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.

------
tptacek
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
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
Why? He's not going to get any noticeable amount of votes and won't cause any
damage to another candidate.

~~~
Bud
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?

~~~
jfager
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?

~~~
tptacek
There are probably very few people on this thread who would pick Hillary
Clinton as their dream candidate, but there's also very few people here who
think that she wouldn't be a million times better than President Cruz.

~~~
jfager
Based on the actual voting record, on the most serious issues, she's about on
par with the worst president of the modern era. Cruz and Trump would be worse,
sure, but not by "a million times", more like 2x.

Four years of letting Republicans remind everyone how terrible they are at
governing for a chance to be rid of Clinton for good and take back Congress
and the White House in 2020? Maybe worth it.

~~~
Bud
You seem to be deeply confused. Hillary casting a pro forma vote for something
does not equate in any way with initiating the thing in question.

Deep down, you know this, of course. You know it's blatantly silly for you to
say that Hillary Clinton is "on par" with W. But somehow your filter just
failed to kick in.

~~~
uououuttt
I agree that she is on par with Bush, honestly. She's been central to an
administration that has conducted just as much war and added just as much debt
as Bush's.

And I would also pick Trump over her, if only out of sheer morbid curiosity.

------
studentrob
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
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
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.

~~~
tptacek
Sanders' amendment essentially says that nothing in the First Amendment can be
construed to limit Congress's ability to protect the integrity of elections,
and (this is explicit in the amendment and without precedent anywhere else in
the Constitution) from the wealthy.

He delegates to Congress the details on how to use that new power to suppress
the First Amendment.

~~~
tbrake
I do normally agree with your posts but this seems ... distressingly
principled, if you like :)

If we adhere to the idea that "money is speech" (Buckley v Valeo) and resist
all attempts at suppressing speech, how do we avoid an eventual slide into
plutocracy when upwards of 90% of all elections these days are won by the
candidate who spends the most money?

~~~
tptacek
I don't know what I think about campaign finance reform. On the one hand I
have the obvious concerns about money buying influence. On the other hand,
money tried _real real hard_ to buy the 2012 election and failed comically.

Meanwhile, the free speech issues involved in regulating campaign spending,
while admittedly very inconvenient for all of us, are real, and no appeal to
plutocracy extinguishes them.

Certainly: the approach Sanders seems to take to this problem, of _literally
amending the Constitution to neuter to First Amendment_ and then delegating to
Congress --- yes, this Congress --- an unlimited power to regulate political
speech, is not OK with me.

There are lots of reforms I want to see happen at the federal level.
Sentencing reform, accountability for prosecutors, financial markets
regulation, health care, school funding, health care, drug decriminalization,
and health care are all I think good targets for top down federal regulation.
Campaign finance, I think, might be a better thing for states to grapple with
first.

~~~
JamesBarney
You're right that there isn't a lot of evidence about whether money influences
elections. But ultimately it doesn't matter whether money influences
elections. What is more important is whether elected officials believe money
is influential in elections, and I think this is trivially true.

What are your fears if "The Democracy is for People Amendment" passed? Are you
worried that the congress would limit political spending too much? Or are you
worried that the amendment doesn't specifically separate political spending
from political speech well enough?

~~~
tptacek
It doesn't separate political spending from political speech _at all_.

~~~
JamesBarney
I read this as specifically giving congress the authority to set limits on
raising and spending money. I don't see any language granting them to ability
to restrict political speech.

SECTION 1.To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to
protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and
the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending
of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

[0] - [https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-
re...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-
resolution/19/text)

------
Navarr
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)

~~~
bsimpson
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.

------
vvpan
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
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-
neu...](http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neurotic-
debbie-wasserman-schultz-shes-a-terrible-person/)

I don't think she's going to keep her job.

~~~
beat
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.

------
beat
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
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.

------
nostromo
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
That's true of Sanders, too.

~~~
r00fus
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
He may not be naive, but he's still a semi-outsider, isn't he? I mean,
technically, he's not even a Democrat.

------
13thLetter
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
He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign
finance. Hence the pivot.

~~~
13thLetter
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
It's more like "I was unable to climb this mountain because I couldn't
breathe" to "Let's pack oxygen tanks".

~~~
13thLetter
No, I like my simile better.

Nothing and nobody will stop you from bringing oxygen tanks on your climb, and
learning to use them is relatively straightforward. Changing the system of
campaign finance in the United States, on the other hand, requires navigating
dozens of immensely complex special interests, will be opposed by one or both
major parties, and we haven't even gotten to what the courts might say yet.
It's _hard_.

~~~
zeckalpha
Sounds like Lesterland.

------
noelsusman
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
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.

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

~~~
smt88
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.

------
Quanticles
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.

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

------
EGreg
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)

------
shmerl
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
"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)

------
tinco
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?

~~~
superuser2
Lessig is a member of the liberal elite. He's a Harvard professor with
multiple advanced degrees, writes books and gives speeches with big words in
them for academic audiences, advocates pro-consumer anti-business IP policy,
and endorsed Obama.

That is emphatically _not_ a recipe for being taken seriously by the
Republican party. A successful Republican candidate is the kind of guy a
redneck feels he could have a beer with, bonding over frothing hatred for
Obama, who is definitely a Muslim and probably not an American. Higher
education is a bed of liberal snakes, waiting to corrupt our youth and rob
them of their good Christian family values. Science is to be distrusted, if
not outright rejected. Job creators are the true American heroes and should be
given as much power as possible and taxed as little as possible: they've
earned it, through superior intellect and hard work. If anyone needs to be
disenfranchised in political discourse, it's not the rich, it's the welfare
queens and the unions.

You have a point: there are many similarities between Lessig's views and
idealized conservatism, particularly libertarianism. But the mainstream
Republican base is going to hate him _personally_ , and after that, nothing
else matters.

~~~
asharm52
And yet the second place Republican candidate is an extremely well educated
and successful neurosurgeon? Sounds like rednecks aren't the ones with
frothing hatered

------
xcavier
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.

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interesting_att
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.

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vonklaus
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.

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PythonicAlpha
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.

