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from the he's-in-but-does-he-have-a-chance dept.
TechDirt reports
Larry Lessig Dumps His Promise To Resign The Presidency In An Attempt To Get People To Take His Campaign Seriously
We've written a few times about Larry Lessig's somewhat wacky campaign for President, which was premised on the idea that it was a "referendum" campaign, where his entire focus would be to push Congress into putting in place serious campaign finance reform and then resigning from the Presidency. As we noted, the whole thing was a bit of a gimmick. And apparently that gimmick hasn't been working too well.
Earlier this month, Lessig noted that he was being shut out from the Democratic debates, despite being a Democrat running for President and polling roughly on par with a few of the other nobodies in the campaign. The problem is that the Democratic National Committee apparently chose to ignore the campaign and because it refused to officially "welcome" him to the campaign, pollsters aren't including him and thus he didn't have enough polling data to be invited to the debate.
[...] Late on Friday (not exactly the best time to announce anything but bad news...) Lessig announced that he's dropping the promise to resign, because while it may have gotten some attention as an initial gimmick, it was also dragging him down (including potentially keeping him out of the debates).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondoctor on Saturday October 24 2015, @10:42AM
Running for president stating he would wave a magic wand, successfully fix a specific issue and resign is so arrogant it boggles the mind.
Now we're supposed to think he's magically developed a deep understanding of American politics, economics, foreign policy and also the character, strength and will to be president and deal with these issues successfully? You be the judge.
By making this announcement he has demonstrated his incompetance and inablilty to handle modern US politics.
AKA: Fuck off.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @11:19AM
That one issue is at the core of everything that is wrong.
The gov't is for sale to the highest bidder.
What exists is an oligarchy.
If you don't see the Fascism of the 1930s in the USA of the 21st Century, your understanding of the state of things is extremely poor.
Until the underlying problem is fixed (undo Citizens United), we don't have a Democracy and anything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
You need to switch off Lamestream Media.
It's stopping you from seeing things as they are.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @05:24PM
This isn't Athens of c. 500 BC, or a small town discussing an issue with zoning, this is the Internet age. When it comes to major public policy issues, to a large extent people get their opinions for the media, from TV news channels (real or "faux"), talk radio, web sites and YouTube videos, and commentators with outsized personalities.
The Supreme Court ruled [wikipedia.org] that Congress can't restrict PAC expenditures, even those which specifically target political candidates. What's Lessig going to do about that? He can't do anything about it, except promise to appoint justices with different views than the conservative Republican appointees. Hillary or Bernie would do the same.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:44PM
The Democracy (not "republic") of ancient Athens had massive citizen involvement. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
("Jury size" will be a real eye-opener for you.)
Your attempt to construct a metaphor falls flat here.
.
[Lessig] can't do anything about [the injection of money into politics], except promise to appoint justices with different views
First, you missed the appointment of appellate judges who can rule on stuff.
If SCOTUS decides not to take a case, that lower ruling stands.
...and, in thinking that tweaking the membership of the judicial system after someone quits|dies is the -only- power a US president has, you are showing your ignorance once again.
Thomas Jefferson said that there should be a constitutional convention once a generation and the founding documents should be rewritten if found to be lacking regarding the current state of
the republic.
(That dude was actually pretty radical.) [google.com]
A small but meaningful tweak that a president could get going, as leader of his party and leader of the nation, would be an amendment to put a term limit of let's say 12 years on federal judges instead of the originally-specified "during times of good behavior" (i.e. lifetime appointments).
Lessig's campaign is all about fundamental change to the governmental system via significant constitutional amendment(s).
He's about putting the influence of the Chief Executive behind the position that Money is not speech; corporations are not people.
http://www.wolf-pac.com/the_plan [wolf-pac.com]
https://movetoamend.org/ [movetoamend.org]
-- gewg_