People on "our" side of the ideological spectrum are going to have an unpleasant reckoning soon with the fact that the governing that really matters happens at the state and local level. State office campaigns build a back-bench for federal politics, and the states actually do serve as laboratories for democracy, and most of the rulemaking people come into contact with are state and city rules, not federal ones.

If you want to fight corruption in politics, start by finding a way to do it in your city or state, and then try to get the idea to spread to other states. That's how cannabis is going to end up legalized; it's how death- with- dignity legislation will happen; it's also how the GOP is going to carve out reproductive health rights.

Liberals suck at this. We control a fraction of the state legislatures that the GOP does and we haven't managed to leverage control over urban centers to mitigate that.

Meanwhile, the "outsider" liberals all tilt at federal windmills. What did Lessig think was going to happen in the parallel universe where he won? The President doesn't set campaign finance policy.

He could have run for a state government office and won.