Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

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.

Yes, his strategy for getting the message out was broken, but he understands his campaign was quixotic in its initial state (referendum president), and has since agreed the idea was "stupid". Since the beginning, he made known what he really wanted, at a minimum, was the chance to make this issue more of a priority among all candidates.

This is just my opinion, but being a "spoiler" for the party never really appeared to be a likely outcome for Lessig, nor did being an agent for change. The only prospect he ever really had was one of failure. Failure to deliver his message to the masses. And it's a shame, because I think a grass roots movement focused on this message might be successful with the right person and strategy behind it.

Politics is the art the possible and sometimes it takes several years for something to gain momentum, something that often starts in futile attempts and yes often ends with not succeeding. But once in a blue moon it does and that is the important part.

You keep arguing as if there is a right way to think about these things. If that is your claim then I do not share that belief.

Doing is the only way of discovering.

That there are plenty of people that do obvious stupid things which end bad in hindsight does not cancel out that there are plenty of people who do obvious stupid things and in hindsight succeed.

We have plenty of critical thinkers in this world, it's the constructive thinkers we lack.

Perhaps the counter-argument is that you could enter politics away from an election, to "test the waters" without drawing support away from other candidates. But that's not a serious way to enter politics. Or you could enter politics at a different level, a lower level. I don't know if that's a viable way for Lessig to accomplish his aim. The same type of problems he's talking about might exist in other political spheres, but they aren't the ones that seem to concern him primarily. I can buy those arguments, but they leave me uneasy for a reason I can't characterize. It reminds me somewhat of the process of becoming the mayor of the city of London [1], where you're only allowed to run once several groups of people approve of you.

It seems like Lessig is being held to a different standard, almost, because he is entering politics with a specific policy objective in mind, rather than because he himself wants to become a leader. Most politicians enter politics simply to win and become leader, and so they can be judged by whether they win. Lessig is entering to accomplish an aim, and so it is possible to criticize his candidacy on the basis of whether he'll accomplish the aim, to a degree greater than other candidates. "By entering politics to accomplish that policy, you are being disruptive rather than helpful" is the charge, and I agree that it is a reasonable charge. A President needs to be an overall effective leader, and not ignore everything but their single pet issue. From that perspective I agree with the criticism. Yet I still feel that the charge of being a spoiler is a circular argument in some way. He's only a spoiler because he's a spoiler, and once you stop defining him as a spoiler, he becomes a serious candidate. Now of course, we have reason to believe that he is not in fact a serious candidate, which is a valid criticism, but it seems like that should be the criticism ("you are going to be a bad leader because you're only focused on one issue"), rather than "you are a spoiler".

The underlying problem seems to be with how winner-takes-all voting works.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c

Let us remember, Bush II ran on a platform of no nation building. Then an opportune event happened that made it time to perform some already-planned nation building. Why are we so sure Gore would not have approved the same invasion?

The protest vote is called so for a reason. This system takes your dissent and converts it to support by frightening you with a scarier bogeyman. I would respect its elegance if we weren't all trapped in it.

> A first, eloquent protest came 10 days ago from a group of a dozen former 'Nader's Raiders,' who asserted that their former mentor had broken a promise not to campaign in states where he could hurt Gore and begged him to reconsider doing so.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-in...

I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.

But I only forgot about it because I simply don't see how that matters in an real way.

Even if corporate personhood went away then (actual, real human) people would be paid to speak for a corporation, and then you hit the the 1st Amendment rights issues again.

Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?

Unlike regular political actions committees, which can donate to candidates and must report who they receive donations from in turn, Super PACs are not required to report their sources of income.

This essentially means that people are free to spend unlimited amounts of their own money talking about their favored political candidate, though they can't donate unlimited amounts to the politician's campaign.

I don't have a strong personal stance on this issue, but I consider the ruling fundamentally fair. If I want to spend an unlimited amount of my own money buying advertising space to raise awareness around global warming, I can do that. That's speech, and large-scale speech takes money. I should be able to do the same thing to support a political candidate.

The budgeting problems of campaigns are not my concern. The ability of a few wealthy elites to completely dominate the political conversation simply by having more money, and therefore more speech, is.

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.

Do you not see how difficult it is to identify what money is being spent in support of political campaigns and what money is not? Or, do you trust people who are corrupting politics to properly label how they are spending money as either a) on politics or b) not on politics? If not, who will figure it out and how? What if a foreign company starts advertising online? Do we censor that? Do we forbid US companies from investing in them which is a form of indirect support?

The whole reason I posted the above was to raise awareness that simply ending citizens united is not a whole solution unto itself. It may just drive the money underground and make it harder to track. We need a real public, open discussion about this, giving proper thought to everyone's ideas, or we'll never move forward

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?

But your last sentence makes me think you actually believe, so I'm going to burn some time on you and perhaps get past the emotion here.

Like you said, just tax everyone more! A 100% tax on earnings is reasonable in some cases; Norway does it, just tax like madmen until the debt is paid.

Well, you could do that, you could even seize everyone's property to pay down the debt, (and I don't see why that isn't a reasonable proposal either.)

The problem with that plan is, even if you did those things, the growth in social security and Medicare is too fast for even asset seizure to catch. All these trust funds "running out of money" you hear about are simply the growth of those programs outstripping the IOU's owed AND the amount congress allocates extra for additional growth. You'll get to a point where the growth spirals as lives are extended, etc

Debt is the place that you can start to install some controls. That is why our media and congress always describe it as a "showdown" or "battle". The battle is quite lopsided because the vast majority of politicians in all parties don't want to touch this and hate any boat rocking, and there's a lot of lobbyists to pay back.

Can you honestly tell me what the spending priorities are for congress? There are none! Everything is important, and all budgets for every department may only grow based on their rules for baseline budgeting in the face of increasing divides between parties and people in government - in other words, the stalemate we've seen over the past 18 years results in budgets each year that are simply last year's budget + 5% with occasional huge jumps in new spending whenever a crisis arises and everyone temporarily agrees to authorize new spending.

As I said, debt is the place to begin the place to begin debate about our spending priorities. Why? Because any new debt must be _authorized_, hence voted on. It's annoying to confront tough issues! Hence all the acrimony.

Okay, so just look at your life, your security. You think the system we have here is stable? Its so fragile and full of corruption, look at what happened in 07-08 with the fraudulent loan scams the big banks were running. And congress is the flashpoint for these crises every time. So, I'm agreeing with you that there is potential for damage if we try to rein in the spending and get some priorities.

What's the alternative that you are suggesting? Don't deal with it, let the instabilities grow, and eventually have an unmanaged collapse. Do you disagree?