Slashdot Mirror
Electoral System That Lessig Hopes To Reform Is Keeping Him Out of the Debate (usatoday.com)
schwit1 writes: Lessig has raised a million dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at, but he's being given the cold shoulder by the Democrats when it comes to participating in the debates. I think he's got a good argument for being included — he's certainly as serious a candidate as some of the others, and I'm hearing a lot about his campaign.
Why are they keeping Lessig out? According to Lessig, it's for the same reason he wants in: "My view is that if we can get this message [of reform] into the debate it would change the dynamics of this Democratic primary entirely. This issue framed in this way totally blows up the Democratic primary."
Hillary and Bernie, he says, are promising the moon to voters, but can't deliver. Lessig told me, "If I can get on that stage and say the rocket can't get off the ground, and we have to change this dynamic first," the narrative shifts in a way that the leading candidates can't address.
Why are they keeping Lessig out? According to Lessig, it's for the same reason he wants in: "My view is that if we can get this message [of reform] into the debate it would change the dynamics of this Democratic primary entirely. This issue framed in this way totally blows up the Democratic primary."
Hillary and Bernie, he says, are promising the moon to voters, but can't deliver. Lessig told me, "If I can get on that stage and say the rocket can't get off the ground, and we have to change this dynamic first," the narrative shifts in a way that the leading candidates can't address.
Oh my, someone told this gent there was going to be a primary race. Sorry, we've only got a coronation scheduled here.
This guy really does not understand politics. Besides, Bernie > him.
It doesn't matter whether he can get into the debates, not really. Just look at what happened to Dr. Paul. When the people with real power make that decision it sticks. Only the blessed are given any chance at all to win the primaries.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It's the Democrat Party and the media that is keeping him out of the debates. The Electoral System has nothing to do with it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's about the number of votes and nothing else. His approach is not pulling in any, except from the fringe. That's why he's not in the debates. So the system is working in this case.
This is the first of many things that need to change.
Money needs to be out of politics. Buying office leads to plutarchy. not democracy.
For all the "what about my speech" people, you gain it not lose it.
In the current system only the wealthy have any real speech.
Yes, people vote, but there is no real voice, only selecting between awful choices presented by the powerful.
emt 377 emt 4
The Republicans are currently blowing up their establishment. It takes some balls to do that, especially if you're a politician. They're trying to shake things up and get the Old Guard to move on. This has come from the ground up over the past few election cycles and it appears to be working.
Why can't the Democrats do that same?
It isn't a coronation - it's the slow, public execution of Hillary! as a candidate.
All at the hands of Obama.
Who controls the DoJ where the FBI has slowly leaked that they could very well recover all of the emails Hillary! wanted no one to see? Who controls the Dept. of State that's slowly releasing the Hillary! emails, each time providing evidence for more and more Hillary! lies?
Drip. Drip. Drip. For months now, with no signs of it stopping. And each drip makes Hillary! look less trustworthy - as hard as that is to fathom.
There's no love lost between the Clinton and Obama camps, and Biden is in the Obama camp....
You are all Cows. Cows say MOOOOOOOOO. MOOOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mooooooooooo cows moooooooooo. mooo say the cows. YOU VOTER COWS!!!
by showing up as competitive without having a SuperPAC at all.
I don't see Lessig's referendum only strategy to be any more likely to come to pass than his previous let's build our own SuperPAC attempt. He could have actually ran for senator and had some impact from within the system. It would have also gotten him more of a podium for advocating for these changes.
Lessig has raised a million dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at
A million dollars is nothing. Sorry to break this to you but that's not even enough to be a serious contender in a lot of state level elections. A million dollars is a rounding error in current day presidential elections. Someone like Hillary Clinton can raise multiples of that in a single evening. $1 million might seem like a lot to some people but it really isn't.
but he's being given the cold shoulder by the Democrats when it comes to participating in the debates. I think he's got a good argument for being included — he's certainly as serious a candidate as some of the others, and I'm hearing a lot about his campaign.
No he really isn't a serious candidate at this point. Almost nobody knows who the guy is and he has (near as makes no difference) no money to buy recognition with. He's a political lightweight with essentially zero name recognition. I have nothing against the guy and I think he's got some interesting ideas but right now he is definitely not a serious candidate. He's basically a one issue guy who has offered to resign after fixing those issues (campaign finance, gerrymandering, voter access) which basically makes him a non-starter. Basically that means that even if he were successful (which he almost certainly wouldn't be) you'd be voting for his VP to be president and a new VP to be named later.
It should concern us all when a major reformer doesn't realize that both parties share a common Status Quo control.
His attempt was blocked by a rigged voice vote at the convention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lx2AXjlcRk
He won the voice call, but the chairman, simply planned to say "the ayes have it" regardless of the voice call, it was even written up on the teleprompter. It looks like the Democrats are heading exactly the same path. Big donations from rich people, corps run the show, voters kept out in the margins.
Can't have any of that democracy getting in the way.
Can a more complete or even thought out summary be posted?
For years I have believed even the local dog catcher must signal they are corruptible or they will not advance to the next step up the ladder let alone President. Corruption is endemic to politics.
You will not be heard in American Politics if you plan on rocking the boat.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lessig is being kept out for the same reason the DNC is vehemently resisting having more debates: nothing shall put Hillary's candidacy at risk.
Lessig seems to think that people who have power will give it up willingly. Why, because "it's the right thing to do"? Ha, Lessig, tell us another funny one.
We're not going to get approval voting or any other method that satisifies the Condorcet criteria, because Duverger's Law, simply restated, ensures the power of the current political elite.
Lessig did some reasonable work with Creative Commons (even if CC0 is the only free license, CC is still successful). He should use those talents to try to educate people that the "Two Party" system is a cabal of political oligarchs who fleece the people by convincing them they have a choice when in reality there is only "fork over your money or something bad might happen".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Sure, a political lightweight who's the only one with the intellectual courage to put his money where his mouth is and take on the the core political distortions from which most other political distortions flow.
Being right doesn't matter if you can't make a difference. He cannot and (probably) will not get elected, nor does he have a big enough voice to influence the campaign. Trump is an ass with nothing useful to say but he's an ass with a big enough wallet and enough name recognition to make himself heard.
Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with Mr. Lessig on the issues he's concerned about. But I don't think he's going to even make a ripple in this election much less actually affect the public debate in a meaningful way.
...that's the party primary system. Political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, and are not an official part of the electoral process.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Help slay the Hildabeest! Mod down!
publicity upset that it will obtain less free publicity than anticipated.
that's passive aggressive bullshit.
Anyone else read it as "Hillary and Bernie, he says, are promising *to* moon..."?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He is not in the debate because he has no support
http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
....and incorrect pedantry at that. If he had said something about the Constitutional electoral process, you'd have a point, but that's not the case. Would you happen to also be one of those who jumps in with the correction 'the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy' except the fact that its representatives are democratically elected?
Who?
Much as I like his platform, it's hard to treat him as a serious presidential candidate in the context of what a debate is likely to cover when his stated position is that he cares only about passing campaign finance reform and then will resign.
From Lessig's own campaign page (https://lessig2016.us/)
"He will serve only as long as it takes to pass the reforms necessary to fix our corrupt political system. Once passed, he will resign, and the vice president becomes president of a government that works."
That means if you want to have a debate about foreign policy, talk to the VP. Tax policy? Talk to the VP. There may be some people who like the single-minded focus this implies, but since we're talking about a 4-year term, that leaves a huge swath of debate issues left in an unanswerable state, especially since he hasn't named his VP yet.
They say they want someone honest, but what they really mean is they want someone who tells them what they want to hear, but means it. Unfortunately, this is rarely an option. Given the choice between harsh truths and comforting lies, the vast majority are going to choose the liars. So even if he got into the debate, he wouldn't win any support that way.
This is a stupid story. First, the Electoral college doesn't decided who is nominated by either major party. Second, the Electoral college has even less to do with who CNN chooses to let into their debate. Third, who has heard of this person to start with? Doesn't that have more to do with why CNN didn't/won't put them on the stage with the other "serious" contenders?
Not to mention....Why would this story make it to Slashdot? How's this "news for nerds" anyway?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.
1. Get elected.
2. ???
3. Compel congress to pass reform.
I love some of Lessig's ideas, but he doesn't have a prayer of getting into any position to implement them. The current electoral system is rigged so that only the two major parties have any hope of getting a candidate elected to national office. You have to get inside the system in order to have the power to change it -- But why in the world would either party allow in someone whose stated goal is to upset the apple cart and make it harder for the party to win in the future?
The only people in favor of electoral reform are those outside the system. The ones inside the system benefit too much from the status quo.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
All props to him for wanting to fix a broken system, but there are at least two things working against him:
1) Congress - both the House and the Senate are elected by that same system that's broken and, as an outsider, he's going to have to convince them to work against their own interests. The size of the mandate he has, if elected, won't really matter to those guys, at a minimum, for two years. Which brings us to the second thing ...
2) All those other things that the President has to deal with while he's dealing with fixing the election system: trade, education, terror, drugs, crime (and not just handing that stuff out to whatever foreign country we're peeved at today, but actually stopping that stuff here in the US). He might actually have to stop once in a while to talk about the nutjobs in North Korea. Or maybe even *do* something to someone, somewhere. These are jobs and authorizations that can't get handed off to the VP, because the VP is pretty much just a guy hanging around waiting for something to happen to the President.
Lessig is being stupidly naive if he thinks anyone else thinks he can solve the situation in an hour with a fiat declaration to Congress. Hell, he's naive if he thinks it can be done in year. If he wants to be taken seriously by anyone other than a bunch of /.'ers, he needs to have people and policies in place to deal with the things that *might actually try to kill us* or bankrupt us or just plain take advantage of us.
Lessig is like one of those sad little one-issue Libertarians that show up at a hotel in Des Moines every four years and takes part in a clownshow that not worth airing on television.
He needs to get real and get big, now, or go home.
So is what we're saying, is that anyone who can raise 1 million dollars towards a campaign should be allowed to participate in the debates? That sounds like a recipe for making the debate worthless or filled with crackpots to me. If the head of the KKK raises a million bucks and wants to run as a democrat, should he be allowed into the debates even though his polling is nil?
If you want to change the system, why the hell would you run for president? Any true change is going to happen in the legislature.
It is ironic that a candidate whose campaign is based on denying others the ability to speak is complaining that he is being denied the ability to speak.
Yeah, James K. Polk was a real loser.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Perhaps, but having him be able to speak his message in the national debate would start the ball rolling. We may not be ready to fix the rotten core of our system this cycle, but it's important to expose the real problem so when the next president manages to fix nothing substantive, people will know why and have possible solutions in mind.
It may take some time, but it has to start somewhere.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
This country, or at least those in low electoral counts, will curse the day, if they get rid of the the electoral college. The only reason politicians today, give any rats ass about small count states, is BECAUSE of the electoral college. Base it only on popular vote, and those states can kiss ANY money from DC, goodbye. While they are at it, repeal the 17th amendment, and put the election of senators, back into the hands of the state legislators, where it belongs. As it stands now, the people have two houses. The house of representatives, and the senate. This leaves the states, out of the loop, in the republic. The states are to be the ones electing the senators, which gives the states, their "voice" in Washington DC.
That otherwise intelligent individuals succumb to the timeless ignorance of a government solution to the world's problems? Every which-way you look, there is evidence their solutions do not work. The economics of their solutions have never worked. Entire countries can be cited as examples of terrible socialist policies put in place, that destroyed the lives of millions. Yet we continue to receive warmly welcomed, watered-down socialists as candidates for the leader of the free world. Any argument that is contrary to the liberal position is deemed as unworthy, ill-informed, ignorant... Most of their whining has been addressed economically over the last thousand years. Eventually conservatives will be battling lions in an arena...with the crowd of stubborn imbeciles cheering their destruction.
You sound like Dr Evil, thinking $1 million is real money.
Overall spending, 2012 Presidential Election:
Dems: $964 million
Repubs $1.12 billion
(https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/)
Yes, when the amount you've raised is 1/1000 what EITHER candidate in 2012 spent, that is precisely a "sneezing at" amount. It's nothing.
-Styopa
www.cnn.com?????
Lessig has interesting ideas, but he's not a realistic candidate. The debates aren't a forum for everyone with interesting ideas, they're supposed to give us a look at people who actually have a chance at being elected.
From TFS:
Yes, that's precisely why he can't get on the stage. The entire circus is predicated on the illusion that the rocket can get off the ground. Circus de-bunkers are not, pretty much by definition, members of the circus.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Evidently you do not know how classified information works.
Yes, information that was previously unclassified can be classified later.
However, information that is generated by classified sources are classified from the moment they are created and they are classified whether they are marked as such or not. Anything generated by a classified system is automatically classified. All classified systems and info need to be brought into accountability.
Even better is when you put classified info on an unclassified system. The whole thing now becomes classified. Her email server at the FBI probably has a TOP SECRET sticker on it by now.
She was pretty high up as far as authority went, and there's a high probability she was presented with raw data that was so time sensitive, it was unmarked.
Even giving her the benefit of the doubt, it does not matter. She should have known better.
Those of us who have handled classified info in the past can easily see the problem with her situation here.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Why can't the Democrats do that same?
The Republicans are so fightable, and so terribly bad at making appear that they are not evil, stupid, backward, and generally raping the planet, that they are kind of uniting the Democrats behind a "We don't want to vote for Clinton but we have to vote for a not-Republican and Clinton is the only option the part leadership is letting us vote for" standard.
The Republicans are also throwing open their primaries as part of a strategy the last couple of elections, whereas the Clintons sewed up the party leadership in a serious way this election, undoubtedly with help from Obama after a backroom deal she made with him when he was elected and she got SecState.
What does Polk have to do with any of this? He wasn't single-issue, and he neither pledged to resign nor resigned.
Is this really shocking? It's Larry Agran in 1992 all over again.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Less than 0.1%.
Nah, that couldn't be it. Must be a CONSPIRACY.
Democrats are quite happy with things how they are I mean winning twice, we figure we got a good 9 more presidential wins.
2 a Woman, two a Hispanic, 2 a Asian and 2 a gay then another black but she only wins one 4 year term.
I've got an insulted witch looking over my shoulder.
I agree; I support Lessig and would support him for President if he were actually willing to do the job. I think he'd be able to do a lot of good on various issues.
I don't think his resignation pledge is compatible with taking him seriously; our nation deserves better than that. Our offices are not tools for stunts.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
He was quad-issue. And he planned never to run for a second term.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
1. Select by LOTTERY
https://equalitybylot.wordpres...
2. Candidate should QUALIFY in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/f...
Casteism
Yes it is. A million dollars is nothing in terms of campaign fundraising.