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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."
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
... 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.
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.
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!
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.
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 *
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!
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?
He decided to remove the resignation component from his plans weeks ago. He was prepared to go whole hog. The Democratic Party still didn't want him in.
Maybe if he hadn't started off with such a silly plan in the first place, people might have taken him a little more seriously.
There are many labels you could give his plan, but "silly" seems inappropriate, at least if you know any history. The Founding Fathers would probably have strongly approved of such an initiative, since they knew their history too and modeled our country after principles of ancient Greece and Rome.
The ancient Romans had a specific way of dealing with a major crisis -- they'd elect a dictator as an "extraordinary magistrate" whose sole purpose was to deal with the crisis and then resign. The classic example invoked by the Founding Fathers was Cincinnatus who twice was given absolute power by the Romans and then gave it up to return to his farm. For the Romans, there was nothing worse than a politician who sought to keep power for a long time -- a trend that held for centuries until Julius Caesar finally broke that system and turned the Republic into an Empire.
George Washington has been compared to Cincinnatus a number of times, in that Washington could likely have been declared king after the Revolutionary War, but refused -- and then also made the example of resigning from the Presidency after two terms to avoid setting a precedent for a kind of king-like life-long reign.
I agree that Lessig's idea was idealistic and weird from a modern political perspective, but our country was founded on the ideal of a man who would take power to usher in ultimate reform (particularly in a crisis) and then give it up and return to his normal life. The Romans -- and the Founding Fathers -- thought there was no greater patriotic or noble duty than to be able give up great power once you have served your purpose.
The thing that's sad about Lessig's run is not only that he failed to get attention to his actual platform, but also that his revival of this old idea of giving up power failed to galvanize the American people, at a time when our system is moving increasingly toward concentrated power in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Such a return to the ideals of the Founders may be one of the few things that could prevent an ultimate devolution into a Caesar-like autocratic regime at some point in the future. (And if that sounds overly alarmist, consider that the decline of the Roman Republic happened gradually introduced by reformers who pledged to help "the people" more and more, and with each stage of "populist" reform -- and periodic scare tactics and wars -- the "people" voted to give up more and more rights to their ruler.)
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
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.
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