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Larry Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign, Citing Unfair Debate Rules (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Harvard law professor Larry Lessig is ending his run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Lessig blames the demise of his campaign on party rules that have left him "shut out" of the Democratic debates. "The party won't let me be a candidate," Lessig said in his final campaign video. "I can't ask people to support a campaign that I know can't get before the members of the Democratic Party."
This is the Democrat Party we are talking about. The coronation of Hillary for 2016 was decided years ago.
You think you want to know the truth...but you don't. It's worse than anything you could even imagine.
Lessig has great ideas, and we need someone really serious to fix the corruption in our system. However, I can't imagine anybody taking his platform seriously. He wants to resign after a partial term! I think people won't want to elect someone that's only serious about doing part of the job. A specialist. Unfortunately, the US has been sick for a long time and needs a specialist.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Perhaps a single issue "I'm going to pass one law and then resign" candidate just isn't well aligned with the Democratic party platform? Just a thought.
HuffPo actually explains how the rules changed:
The DNC's rules for candidate participation in their debates were pretty straightforward--or so we thought. In August, before the Lessig campaign began, DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, announced the standards for being included in the debates. As she described the rule, a candidate had to have 1 percent in three DNC sanctioned national polls, "in the six weeks prior to the debate."
[...]
And indeed, that is precisely the rule that was applied in the first debate. As CNN specified in a late September memo, to qualify a candidate had to poll at 1 percent in the "polls released between August 1, 2015 and October 10, 2015." The first debate was October 12.
[...]
During that call, I was told that the DNC participation standard for the debates was for a candidate to be at one percent in three polls conducted, "six weeks prior to the debate"--not the clarified rule cited earlier by Wasserman-Shultz and the DNC political director that a candidate had to be at one percent in three polls conducted "in the six weeks prior to the debate."
So the DNC had said 1% in the six weeks before the debate and used that standard in the first debate, but in the second debate where Lessig qualified by that standard they switched to 6 weeks before the debate.
It seems odd even if you don't take the wording at face value and wonder about the missing upper bound in the range given by "six weeks before the debate".
I can see why the DNC doesn't want a candidate who is there almost explicitly as a one issue protest candidate but that's a fairly dirty way to go about it.
I stole this Sig
It was quite obvious from day one that the people who organize the party have absolutely zero interest in Larry's platform, and that they will make sure that anything like his project gets hidden from the general public.
As soon as he had any chance to be something more than a "decorative" candidate the party would make sure that he is blocked, because the system suits them just fine.
The core issue is that the sheep vote for who ever has the more shiny adverts, so there is no "short term fix", maybe something like a 10 year project starting with a general campaign telling the public to under no circumstance vote for an incumbent candidate, no matter how bad the other guys are the only way you as a citizen can be listened is by showing that you have the power to punish a politician, and you need to punish all of them just for being unable to fix the system.
Then campaign on : look at the tools that enable you to asses you representatives past performance, and future projects, ignore their adverts they are of no value what so ever...
Then maybe, just maybe for the third round people will vote for their candidates because they believe in what they are achieving, or really planning to achieve and not because they have more shiny ads and are not quite as bad as the other guy(gal).
I think that we need to scrutinize election rules under the same constitutional lens we're using for gun laws.
The fundamental problem with that approach is that these aren't Constitutional rules. They're PARTY rules. And the parties can make damned near any rule they want, because it's their party. If you want to run under the banner of that party, then they call the shots.
George Washington warned about party shenanigans in his Second Farewell Address. Starting about where it says "[Page 11]".
... and no one except his Mom and a few slashdot editors knows or cares.
That may change. For me, even just a few years ago, the corrupting influence of money in politics wasn't an issue that I'd ever really thought much about. There was a lot that I was angry about. But it was hard to make sense of it all.
The Iraq war never made any sense. If there was any country that should been held accountable for 9/11, it was Saudi Arabia. But somehow Saudi Arabia was our "friend". And then there was the housing/financial collapse followed by a long recession. Supposedly the Tea Party was all freaked out about the budget deficit but their solution was to advocate cutting taxes on the rich. Huh? If you're really concerned about budget deficits then you raise taxes - particularly on the people who can easily afford to pay more.
In his Gettysburg Address, which he probably wrote while he had smallpox, Abraham Lincoln talks about the USA having been founded to have a government of, by, and for the people. Now, at least until our robotic overlords take power, governments are always comprised of people. But what Abraham Lincoln meant was ordinary people - that the U.S.A was founded to be different than Europe, and most of the rest of the world, that was, at the time, governed by a small, mostly hereditary, ruling class living lives of frivolous luxury by exploiting everyone else. To me, one of the most egregious betrayals of the principles on which the USA was founded occurs at times when the USA is itself controlled by a small mostly hereditary ruling class and when the ruling class uses the US military to support brutal dictatorships in other countries because these dictatorships give money and other personal favors to members of the US ruling class - i.e. the "banana republic".
So why does a candidate like Hillary, who claims to be all about women's rights, have such a cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia? Obviously, follow the money. Like the Bushes, the Clintons have been given millions and millions of dollars by the Saudi ruling family. Do we want yet another president for the USA who deep in the pocket of brutal dictatorships like Suadi Arabia? Well, my personal answer is: Absolutely not!
There was a time when I didn't get it. But now, with Hillary running for president, and likely to receive the democratic nomination. Lessig's message about the corrupting influence of money was exactly what was needed. It's just too bad that the Democratic party chose to shut him down and suppress his message.
Except he isn't really? I mean he can't even PROPOSE laws, he has to have someone else do it.
Lessig didn't drop out because the debate rules were "unfair". He dropped out because the DNC changed the debate rules midstream in a way that would exclude Lessig from the debates. His campaign worked hard to meet the requirement to participate in the second debate, at which point they changed the rules to exclude again.
Note that he raised more money than Webb and Chafee, who were allowed in the first debate; and if his name hadn't been excluded from polls, it's even conceivable he would have been allowed into the first debate.
If that was truly the case, then there was no point in trying to stop him... Somehow, he scared the Democrats' brass.
Actually they kept him out because of how sharp he is. Afraid he would reveal how corrupt they are and the whole system is. Or are you saying he should never have tried something because it might not work?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
He raised the money they required. Then they changed the rules to requiring 1% in the polls. He got the required 1% in the polls. Then they changed the rules to require the 1% 6 weeks before the debate... They just keep making up new rules that will shut out just him. They are afraid to lose the ad revenue they get from corruption in politics.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Lessig's campaign asked the DNC for clarity on the rule, and they kept waffling back and forth on whether it requires 1% in the polls >6 weeks before the debate, or 6 weeks before the debate. I have a feeling that noone at the DNC actually knows which it is, explaining the conflicting answers; the 'rule' is probably only there for show, and never actually critically applied; it is simply 'known' which candidates have enough buzz, and those are the ones that make it to the debate.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This is the Democrat Party we are talking about. The coronation of Hillary for 2016 was decided years ago.
No, his main problem was nobody knew who the fuck he was outside of a few nerds.
This guy was less prepared to run a presidential campaign than that fucking idiot Rick Perry. And that makes him a bigger idiot than Rick Perry--now there's an accomplishment.
It doesn't matter how prepared he is. Because the Clintons have the party establishment tied up, Dems have no viable candidates this year other than her, and she has a lot of legacy antipathy that will make the general election harder for her. Bernie's okay, but I figure he basically was allowed to run because he was too crazy a prospect to be a real threat to the Clinton machine.
If he can't convince his own party to put him in a debate, how would he do at convincing congress and senate to support his policies as president? Convincing politically biased groups to do things is just about the primary job skill for a president. It sounds like he thought he had that skill, but it turned out that he wasn't up to the practical test.
Step one: learn your own history. Jefferson forsaw the rise of an American aristocracy and created a perfect tool to prevent and undo it: the estate tax. Since the early 20th century rightwingers have been progressively dismantling that tool and now, surprize surprize, America is ruled by a de facto aristocracy.
Restore the estate tax to 95% and the problem (in all its many forms) is fixed in one generation.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Ive met him a few times and Im from a third world country with no PHD at all. Yet he listened to my ideas with interest and gave constructive and useful suggestions. He listened to my talks the way I listened to his lectures.
You are slandering a man in ignorance. Elitist ? Exactly the opposite. He is a man who spends his life in search of new ideas and cares not where he finds them
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yep. No liberal I know votes democrat because they trust the politicians or has any faith in them delivering on election promises. They vote democrat because if they dont the republicans would give big red button to a batshit insane lunatic.
Better a bad but sane president than a batshit crazy one. Good candidates dont get to be an option anymore.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I thought his job was supposed to be convincing voters. Maybe that's just my biased view of living in a country with much less corruption. He did raise more money than several others in the race, including in the democratic debate and was polled at 1% in three separate polls. So he did convince people. He indeed failed to convince corrupt media that they should give up on millions of dollars of easy profit every year.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Well, the THIRD definition at dictionary.com is "a state in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state", but the FIRST definition is "a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them". Wikipedia leads off "A republic (from Latin: res publica) is a form of government or country in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law."
It's clearly a tortured stretch to refer to a dictatorship as any kind of a republic.
Yes, some of us do know who Martin O'Malley is. He screwed up Baltimore as mayor and then decided to do to the rest of Maryland what he did to Baltimore as governor. Seeing Washington right next door, he decided his ego was big enough to encompass that as well and is now running for the Democrat nomination. But he doesn't have a vagina so this isn't his year.
Voting is not compulsory in the UK.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In one poll, he needed to garner more than 1% in three, but after winning that margin in one poll, they took his name off the next polls.
Because then they could cite the rules about needing to poll to refuse him a seat.
Meanwhile, how many republican nominees did they let in, even on the same damn channels..?
when they refuse to put your name in the polls? That's what they did.
Shutting Lessig out was to stop the idea that money should be taken out of politics, because most of that money goes to the media organisations. Letting Lessig in would cut their revenue significantly.
Remember, this is an industry that wants to get skipping adverts made illegal because it might hurt their profits, and CEOs claim it is "stealing from the company" not to watch the adverts.
You don't think they'd make up rules to save the billions they get from political ad campaigns??
If we don't get leaders that actually solves problems into positions of power it really doesn't matter what we elect.
Lessig has no realistic plan to solve, or even address, any problem. His plan is to amend the constitution (something the president has no power whatsoever to do) and then resign. That isn't a plan, it is a fantasy.
one person - one vote?
If we are going to "Get back to" something, it was originally one LAND OWNER - One Vote. Owning land was like owning stock, own stock and you can vote on how the company was run, own land and you can vote on how the country was run.
Technically it was any Free, male, land owner in most places but some allowed free, female, land owners as well.
The US version was instituted at a different time and for a different reason. The one I cited.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Step one: learn your own history. Jefferson forsaw the rise of an American aristocracy and created a perfect tool to prevent and undo it: the estate tax. Since the early 20th century rightwingers have been progressively dismantling that tool and now, surprize surprize, America is ruled by a de facto aristocracy.
Restore the estate tax to 95% and the problem (in all its many forms) is fixed in one generation.
You might want to listen to "right-wingers" now and then to learn something. The estate tax in its current form has been around for 90 years - not since Jefferson. During that time the exemptions haven't been indexed to inflation so the size of an estate that is taxed is now dramatically smaller than it was back then. That means that it hits small businesses and farms the hardest. Meanwhile actual rich people have carved out big enough exemptions that they don't have to worry about it.
While I don't care to "dismantle it" (of course, I'm not a "right-winger", anyway) it needs to be fixed back to its original purpose of taxing rich people. The debate is similar to the left trying to raise taxes on "the rich" while succeeding in raising taxes on the middle class instead. Doctors and lawyers are not "rich". (In case you're that far left, let me make this simple: "but he has more money than me :(" doesn't mean "he" is "rich")
I know someone right now who owns a farm that's been the family for a few generations. During the time the city has grown up around it and the property values have soared. She's 84, husband is gone. It's unlikely that her four kids can come up with the money when she's gone, so the land will be sold. That wasn't the intent.
Do you have ESP?
This is what happens to all candidates that don't have strong poling numbers. They get shut out of the debates. They get hardly any questions at all. I thought this was supposed to be a democracy? I think that all candidates should get equal time in the debates. Give them all x number of minutes to make their case to the American voters. Without moderators jumping in or getting cut off by other candidates. Every time a candidate jumps in take a minute of time away from their talking time.
The current format is a circus. Nothing more than name calling and gotcha questions. Let's find out what they really have to say and let them stand or fall on their own merits.
Never mind that Sanders has been polling above Clinton at least part of the time, he's not "viable" because "reasons."
Of course, the only reason people believe Sanders is "crazy" is because the media keeps claiming so, but that's a total lie -- in reality, Sanders' positions are completely reasonable and moderate.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A candidate needs 1% to be in a debate, but can't get any national coverage because they are not in the debate.
That is such an obvious logic problem you have to hurt yourself in order to avoid it. We have not even gotten to the point of being over a year before the election. You know how we keep hearing that "it's a long time until election day and Trump and Carson could still lose the nomination"? Well the wey to prevent that would be to omit people from the discussion to begin with.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yes, Obama was not supposed to get the nomination before and Hillary is Rather Irked about that.
The Republicans at least have the good sense this time to kick out THIER retread.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Same reason Biden is not running.
Not quite. Biden isn't running because he doesn't want to get whacked.
By who? Hillary? I think Biden knows that unless Hillary gets perpwalked in handcuffs, his best day in the polls would be when he officially started the campaign. He doesn't have the juice to compete with the Clinton machine. He'd loose like he did before.
Or the Republican? It's pretty clear to me that the republican nominee would wipe the floor with Biden. Biden is a walking gaff machine when he's out talking off the cuff, and if he ran it would really hard for him to stay on prompter. He'd be forever walking back the gaffs...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Based on results of the wars on drugs, poverty, crime, etc. We need a president to declare war on intelligence. I have high hopes for President Trump or Carson on this.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Dems have no viable candidates this year other than her
While Bernie Sanders is an independent, he does caucus with the Democrats. He's also trying to get the nomination of the Democratic party. You haven't explicitly defined 'viable' here, but I believe Bernie Sanders does indeed satisfy the criteria to be elected President.
Bernie's okay, but I figure he basically was allowed to run because he was too crazy a prospect to be a real threat to the Clinton machine.
So you're dismissing his candidacy on emotional grounds? How helpful. If only everyone thought like you -- then maybe, just maybe, we'd have a chance at implementing meaningful change in this country.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I know someone right now who owns a farm that's been the family for a few generations. During the time the city has grown up around it and the property values have soared. She's 84, husband is gone. It's unlikely that her four kids can come up with the money when she's gone, so the land will be sold. That wasn't the intent.
Today, the estate tax applies to inherited assets in excess of $5.43 million. She has 4 heirs, and they can each inherit $5.43 million free from the estate tax. If it's "unlikely that her four kids can come up with the money when she's gone", the implication is that they'll face an estate tax burden greater than $0. That means that the total value of this farm exceeds $21.72 million, assuming the heirs cannot afford any tax burden.
I'd argue that someone with a single asset worth $21.72 million is indeed wealthy, and that the intent of the estate tax was (and is) indeed to tax her. If she chooses to allocate her assets such that she doesn't have any liquid capital, only the farm, then that's her choice. To spin her as some sort of charity case, however, is disingenuous at best. There's enough wealth to generate an annual revenue of $434,400 at a modest 2% interest rate (and even a CD will yield closer to 2.45%). Split evenly between the five family members, that's $86,880 per year per person, indefinitely, living off the interest alone. That's 3.25 times the size of the median individual income. While she has my sympathies for the loss of her husband, I won't be losing any sleep over this independently wealthy family's financial situation.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Never mind that Sanders has been polling above Clinton at least part of the time, he's not "viable" because "reasons."
Of course, the only reason people believe Sanders is "crazy" is because the media keeps claiming so, but that's a total lie -- in reality, Sanders' positions are completely reasonable and moderate.
He's not viable because the general election is going to be a whole lot worse for him than the primaries, no matter how he's polling generally now. The attack ads almost write themselves. They do for Hillary too because of how much is anti-Clinton on the right, so neither of them are great for a general, but she's already been through all of them and her general numbers now are the result of that, whereas Bernie will see a hit once the general public has seen more attack aimed at him. Things like "socialist" may not matter as much on the left, but that label alone will cost him points on the right. And some of his lines in debate will kill him on the right. In reality he *might* be a better president than HRC, he'd certainly care about Americans more and try to make better policy changes, although HRC might get more done even though being much less trustworthy, just because she's a good politician. Most of Bernie's more leftist ideas would be blocked by Congress, but he'd probably get some good things done. It's really hard to say who would ultimately be better.
But either will be better than the Republicans, because the next president gets to appoint major voices to the Supreme Court for the next several decades.
So you can only get known if you're already known?
Honey Boo-Boo for President 2020!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Biden tried and failed to get his party's nomination TWICE already. In this business, the third time isn't the charm, and two strikes is out. His 2008 campaign was effectively over just moments after it started, as he unloaded a half-dozen controversial statements about his opponents that went viral, and never recovered.
His continued poorly-considered statements after becoming Vice President prove he hasn't learned anything, and any Biden campaign is going to be peppered with video of him telling the viewer to "Get a shotgun" followed by usage tips which would get anyone else arrested for negligent discharge of a firearm. Combine that with his advanced age and recently-deceased son, and it's obvious why he wouldn't and even shouldn't run, without resorting to crazy theories.
There's no major animosity between Obama and Clinton that would cause either to set-up the other for failure. Clinton was a close second in the 2008 primaries, far ahead of Biden, and the obvious presumptive nominee next time around.
And just because Biden was Obama's choice for VP doesn't indicate any particular preference or connection. VPs are generally chosen to fill-in and balance out voting blocks, not because the administration has any particular preference for them. In fact quite the opposite (disdain and animosity towards their chosen VPs) seems to be more common.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's not like the Democratic party called him up and gave him permission to run. He declared his candidacy and then quickly and effectively put out a message that the majority of the country agrees with in a way that caused a lot of people to start talking about him. He forced his way into the Democratic contest, he was not "allowed" in. If they would have tried to push him away then there either would have been a lot of people asking questions about why some candidates aren't allowed to debate (which neither party wants to answer), or he would just run as an independent.
He wasn't "allowed" to run, he made it happen because people agree with his message. The reason why there is so much doubt around his candidacy is because the media and the parties keep telling the public that he is a fringe candidate. He's not fringe, he's mainstream. The media is trying to push fringe candidates like Clinton and Trump/Rubio/Cruz on people and call them mainstream, but the polls show that the majority of the country supports Sanders when people aren't being shoved loaded terms like "socialism", where they think it means something that it doesn't. You can see that in polls where people say that they agree with Sanders' positions, and also that they wouldn't vote for a socialist. The media is controlling the dialog, which is why you think Sanders is a fringe candidate or does not have a realistic chance at getting elected.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The U.S. political system would have to be completely overhauled in order for one person to make a difference. Especially as President. If someone actually did a study on the mechanics of our 3 branches of government and the usefulness of them, I'd guess every positive change is matched by at least 10 parts obvious corruption, and who knows how much unadvertised corruption.
I don't want Lessig to waste his time in that clusterfuck because I think he's too good of a guy and doing too much good from an outside perspective. I think the best thing for the Republicans is that the Dems make him the president - and absolutely nothing would get done for 4 years, at least until there was an anti-American impeachment hearing. The only thing he might have direct influence over *might* be Executive Directives, and they'd get put right back in after they shoved him out (if anyone ever stopped following the current ones).
In "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (2008) Jennifer Connelly's character said (approx): "Leaders? [The President and the UN] aren't our leaders - I'll take you to one" and she takes him to a Nobel Prize winner in "cooperative biology" - a brilliant, thoughtful person.
Exactly.
Lessig is more than just a thoughtful person, and rather than seeing him get beat down by the political system - ESPECIALLY if he were to win the Presidency! - I hope he continues making more and more of a difference as a professor, private citizen, and activist.
Best of everything to you, sir!
They would change debate rules to keep him out and deny him access to anyone of significance in the party at any level, local, state, or federal.
...and then all of the supporters that he has been very effective in attracting would be asking questions that the DNC and the RNC do not want to answer. It would be very bad for the DNC to deny him access to the primary. Once he started spreading his message so effectively, and people started listening, then he ensured that he would have a place at the table. The DNC didn't help him get his message out, either, that was all his campaign. The DNC has opted out of putting up their own tables outside of his rallies to sign up voters, because those voters would just vote for Sanders. Think about that one for a second.
They would kill his media coverage more than they have.
"More than they have?" His campaign has survived and prospered despite, not because of, media coverage. He has never had good coverage. The media shows him as being fringe. You could see it in the first debate. The "political insiders", talking heads, networks, etc all declared Hillary the winner. The focus groups on both CNN and Fox, as well as data from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and any number of online polls, all suggested that Sanders had won. The media has been pushing the Clinton narrative since day 1, and Sanders has survived despite the media following the DNC plan, not because of any DNC support.
Everyone in the party would get the message that if they went within ten feet of this guy they would be bucking the party establishment and would not have party support come reelection time.
Which is probably why he has only 1 endorsement from Congress.
That's how major political parties work. They are engines of political control, not of democracy.
No shit.
The DNC missed their chance by killing his campaign before it started. Once his message was out and people were paying attention it was too late. They can't put the genie back in the bottle at this point. They, like everyone else, underestimated the appeal of his message.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
"Grown-ups" don't post as AC.
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