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Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

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Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#161

Post by npizzolato »

ironsides wrote: post #143
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument might make you feel better, and it sure sounds sympathetic, but it doesn't change the fact that Nader's hopeless campaign gave the election to Bush. It's not as if the concept of spoiler candidates is new to US politics; it's how we got Clinton, the President in office at when Nader ran!

The argument that a vote for nader is a vote for bush is flawed. The basic premise of voting is that you vote to support a candidate and or a set of ideas you align with. Its a step better than voting "none of the above" as it provides an idea of what you would prefer. The concept of voting for the "lesser of two evils" just further perpetuates the mess that we find ourselves in today.

Ideologically, from a single voter's perspective, you're right. But practically, and looking at the entire population, it's not. The first past the post voting system we use will always result in two prominent parties, and the spoiler effect certainly exists.

I've always found this video a good explanation of the problems of our voting system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#162

Post by zeckalpha »

13thLetter wrote: post #158

Lessig's actions in the past several years have been a major disappointment. I admired his work in pushing the copyright case (Eldred v. Ashcroft) all the way to the Supreme Court. Even though he lost, that at least got the issue into the media a little bit, something no one else has managed; that's something that could have been built upon. But instead of building on that and (for example) working with tech indistri…

He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign finance. Hence the pivot.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#163

Post by hugh4 »

s73v3r wrote: post #108
hugh4 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court has held that it is, and if you want to argue against it then that's fine, but you need a better argument than "nuh uh". How many of the folks who argue against the Citizens United ruling have actually read it and understand the legal basis for it?

The Supreme Court also held that "Separate but Equal" was perfectly fine. They don't get things right all the time. And the argument is that money isn't speech.

The Supreme Court's job is to decide what laws are legal, not what they think the law ought to be. Deciding what the law ought to be is Congress's job.

Do you suppose that nine Supreme Court justices might have considered and already dismissed your three-word argument in their lengthy decision on the subject?

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#164

Post by rhino369 »

s73v3r wrote: post #115
Pyxl101 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending money is necessary in order to speak to a large audience. You need money to rent space to use as meeting halls, or to buy advertising space like billboards or newspaper space, or even simply run a website. The more traffic, the more eyeballs, the more people impacted, the more it costs. Speech in the real world costs money. The presidential election isn't won in the town square, where everyone can hear him g…

You're not entitled to speak to a large audience. And I'm not saying to completely ban political donations. I'm saying to severely limit them. Let every citizen donate $500/year to political causes, no more. 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.

Not being entitled to something doesn't mean the government can just prevent you from it.

You do in fact have the right to speak to a large audience, if you can find one willing to listen.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#165

Post by aetherson »

tptacek wrote: post #132
pen2l wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning? I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.

This perspective totally ignores the history of the Iraq war, and the distinctive influence of Bush's idiosyncratic cabinet and vice president, all of whom had outsized influence due to Bush's own weakness. The idea that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to an attack from Afghanistan is not well supported by evidence, and not common among historians. Just making this argument is a kind of "tell" that the argue…

Yeah, Gore clearly wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

Now, is there a colorable argument that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan and embroiled the US in costly military adventurism abroad? Sure. But somehow making 9/11 be about Iraq, which it patently was not, is a pathology unique to Bush.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#166

Post by onewaystreet »

tptacek wrote: post #64
studentrob wrote: post #59

I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics. I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority. I'm also very pro free sp…

Sanders supports a Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate campaign finance; in other words, Sanders would support the first Constitutional amendment in the history of the US to deliberately abridge the First Amendment, and would do so to regulate political speech .

It's important when discussing topics like this to note that as long as the Republicans control all/part of Congress Sanders has absolutely no chance of getting this plan passed if he becomes President. In terms of what they could actually get done there is very little difference between Sanders and Hillary.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#167

Post by nl »

gkoberger wrote: post #8
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?

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. That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United.…

Firstly: I'm not in the US, and fairly left leaning even for someone outside the US. That said:

I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided.

I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard.

I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong speech: if people are pushing political agendas using things that are factually incorrect that should be restricted. IANAL, but I think that this is likely to be more legally achievable in the US too: IS libel laws have a model of truth as a defense, and it seems to me this could be a framework for regulating false political speech.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#168

Post by jfb »

oceanstone wrote: post #111
Pyxl101 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first…

Lessig and Nader are so different though. Lessig is being perhaps overly cautious, and bailing after the Democratic Party changed the rules and excluded him from the debates (boo). Nader stayed in the 2000 race until the end, even campaigning in states where Gore and Bush were neck-and-neck.

One important way in which they are different is that Lessig (and his zany wacky deeply unserious I-don't-wanna-be-president campaign for president) has no appreciable constituency.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#169

Post by rhino369 »

studentrob wrote: post #59

I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics. I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority. I'm also very pro free sp…

The best and only constitutional solution is to publicly fund all federal elections. 2 billion a year could fully fund all congressional elections. You don't even need to fund the presidential election because the two parties raise more than enough money themselves. They are already buying literally all the commercial time on TV in swing states. More money doesn't provide much marginal benefit at that stage.

That wouldn't prevent companies from funding PACs, but it would greatly reduce their influence.

I'm not overly familiar with Lessig, but I believe he proposed the public funding option on a RealTime with Bill Mayer.

I'd also increase individual donation limits. Upper Middle Class people throwing 20k to a campaign for shits and giggles doesn't carry the same sort of risk as Boeing giving 500k and then asking for a defense contract.

Re: Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

#170

Post by webmasterraj »

tptacek wrote: post #73
dankohn1 wrote: post #34

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 Le…

Serious question: given that he didn't have a snowball's chance, why did you give him money, as opposed to giving money to some other change agent that does have a chance?

I gave him money, and I didn't think he had a chance to win. I just wanted to see what happens. Even though it failed, it was an interesting experiment (exhibit a, number of upvotes and comments here). Definitely worth my $20.
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