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A familiar name to many in this community; Lawrence Lessig is considering a run at US President.
For those unaware, Lessig is a prominent advocate for copyright/trademark and campaign finance reform.
From the article:
Lessig, a Harvard law professor and government reform activist, announced Tuesday morning that he was launching a presidential exploratory committee to run as what he called a "referendum president" with the chief purpose of enacting sweeping changes to the nation's political system and ethics laws.
"Until we find a way to fix the rigged system, none of the other things that people talk about doing are going to be possible," Lessig said in an interview with The Washington Post, borrowing a phrase that has become Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's rallying cry. "We have this fantasy politics right now where people are talking about all the wonderful things they're going to do while we know these things can't happen inside the rigged system."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:01PM
Others have mentioned that a 3rd-party candidate has a low probability of taking the top spot. [wikipedia.org]
Without gaining the candidacy of an -existing- party which has an already-vibrant structure in each state, the chances are even lower.
Should Lessig gain that spot with an existing party and subsequently win the national general election, he could then leverage that party structure to press for constitutional amendments via individual state governments. [wikipedia.org]
The guy with the top job also has something called the bully pulpit. [google.com]
He could use his influence as Chief Executive to press for a constitutional convention that could make major changes like ranked voting.
Now, being affiliated with a party that doesn't have enough oomph to have already gotten people elected to Congress, it's questionable how much he could get accomplished.
Others have also mentioned that just being in the national race gives him a taller soapbox than Joe Average from which his ideas can be itemized.
This assumes, of course, that
- Lamestream Media will point their cameras and microphones in his direction.
(If you look at the "coverage" of Bernie Sanders in LSM, you will see that LSM is doing the opposite of that because Bernie isn't a complete whore for Wall Street and he desires meaningful change for the 99 Percent.)
- Alternately, it requires that USAians tune out Lamestream Media and instead consume e.g. Pacifica Radio or Free Speech TV or go to non-Reactioary websites for information with zero corporate propaganda.
(I'm not holding my breath on that one.)
-- gewg_