Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#31

Post by aamar » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #5

Honestly, his plan never made sense. Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.

Why not? His plan[1] isn't to overturn or defy Citizens United; he wants to modify and enhance public funding of elections so that it doesn't pay (in general) for Congress to spend time fundraising.

Also, the plan doesn't have broad support in Congress, but it is plausible; there are many in both parties who support it. Some cities and states[2] have viable parallel legislation enacted or in progress.

[1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/

[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/new-york-public-financi...

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#32

Post by s73v3r » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

ermacaz wrote: post #13

scrollaway wrote: post #2

Can someone give me a rundown of how anyone expected anything different to come out of this? Polling at 0% isn't exactly fixed by a televised debate. Sanders is competing with Hillary on a fairly close scale and yet a lot of people still say he has no chance (though I definitely think he does at this point, but I'm not a US citizen so...), so what could possibly happen with Lessig?

Its hard to poll above 0% when your only issue is being against freedom of speech

Citizens United is not freedom of speech.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#33

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #12

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure Lessig expected anything different to come out of this. Sometimes people run to draw attention to some ideas, rather than because they think they have a realistic chance. In other words, Lessig didn't need to win in order to win. (Whether he actually won, in the second sense, is a different question...)

I get what you're saying but, is that really the case? Did he "win"? Most people around the debate didn't even know there were more than 2-3 candidates; if you tell them about Lessig they'll ask you if that's a country or a city.

I didn't say he "won". I said that he was trying to "win" rather than trying to win. I questioned whether he "won".

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#34

Post by dankohn1 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

I supported Lessig's presidential campaign monetarily, even though I never thought he had a snowball's chance and also didn't think that his model of affecting change was fully thought through. As entrepreneurs, I think many of us can sympathize with the idea of knowing that there is a huge, massive problem that needs to be fixed, without necessarily having the solution fully formed.

It would have been so easy for Lessig to coast on the reputation of his extraordinary work with Creative Commons [0] and his professorship at Harvard. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) identified one of the greatest challenges of our time, political corruption. His first proposed solution, the MAYDAY PACn [1] (A SuperPAC to end SuperPACs), was a brilliant idea and an abject failure. So was his second, which was this presidential campaign. It is incorrect to say that he never had a chance, since you can see how close he was in polling [2] to qualifying for the debate, and getting into the debate would have had a huge impact on awareness of his ideas and potential solutions.

I do complain that he had fallen for the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency [3], instead of understanding the complexity required for real change. But, I give him huge props for trying both of these approaches, and I can't wait to see what his third attempt to take on political corruption will be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC [2] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-d... [3] http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#35

Post by nostromo » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

aamar wrote: post #31

nostromo wrote: post #5

Honestly, his plan never made sense. Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.

Why not? His plan[1] isn't to overturn or defy Citizens United; he wants to modify and enhance public funding of elections so that it doesn't pay (in general) for Congress to spend time fundraising. Also, the plan doesn't have broad support in Congress, but it is plausible; there are many in both parties who support it. Some cities and states[2] have viable parallel legislation enacted or in progress. [1] https://les…

Your comment is exactly right in identifying the key hurdle: congress. Not the executive branch; congress.

Obama would have signed any of these bills as well. But there is no bill to sign, because congress doesn't support such a bill.

Replace Obama with Lessig, and you have the exact same impasse we have currently.

Lessig's old plan -- to change congress -- made more sense. But it failed.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#36

Post by PythonicAlpha » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

As much I see, just to few people in the world today have the interest and the capabilities to uphold the democracies of this world.

This is the plain reason, corporations and big pockets can convert the democracies of the world into support organizations for profits.

I see it in my country also. The big corporations more and more often make contracts with the government which nobody in the government understand and where in the aftermath the country was shortchanged in one or the other way and they don't come out of these contracts, where profits is guaranteed even when the people lose.

TTIP and the like are also a great, global way to destroy public control of the countries. Instead, profits will be guaranteed.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#37

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

gee_totes wrote: post #27

jonathankoren wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage. I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not c…

As much as I hate to defend Lindsey Graham, I honestly think he's running for the VP slot. He would make an appealing VP for the Republican base -- hawkish on defense and a veteran of senate dealmaking.

Not that I think he was looking to get put into a hypothetical future Democratic cabinet, but where could he have ended up at, had he greater visibility? Supreme Court? DoJ?

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#38

Post by r00fus » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #9

nostromo wrote: post #5

Honestly, his plan never made sense. Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.

That's true of Sanders, too.

Except that Sanders has street cred.

You know, his entire life has been in politics, and Dems don't want a naive semi-outsider this time (for some Obama has been a let-down).

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#39

Post by smacktoward » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:56 PM UTC

michael_nielsen wrote: post #29

With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, beca…

God, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for "l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun.

Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#40

Post by Quanticles » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:59 PM UTC

This election cycle is making it clear that the democratic party leadership believes in "the ends justify the means". They want a democrat to win the presidency, so they don't want anyone to detract from Hillary and are making things harder for everyone else.