Ah, okay. That section appears to apply only to debates held during the general election. The third sentence in © is the section that outlines primary specific requirements. But, there’s a reason for my earlier caveat about not knowing a ton about election law, in that there could be a relevant section somewhere else in 11 CFR that covers this.
It would probably be very enlightening to read what was said by these lawmakers when proposing the law - the reason a law is written sometimes is kinda hard for folk like me to uncover just by reading the final product.
Thanks for the clarification.
Agreed. There needs to be a big push at all levels of government for clearer legal language. The law should be readable and easily understood by the layman.
As an aside, because this is CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) it is supposed to be the agency gloss and interpretation of the legislation itself. You would think that would make these things easier to read, but it rarely works out that way. It also means that if you’re keen on it, you should be able to get the public record of when the agency created these rules. A discussion and comment period would have happened, and if someone commented that this promoted collusion between the debate staging org and the parties the agency would have to respond. So, if you wanted to hunt for that, you might find a direct response. It’s rarely worth the time and effort, but can be interesting/depressing.
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If Antone from here could I think I’d like it to be you.
Oh wow, if I was actually in charge of something it would be a giant mess. My reasonable exterior hides a seething ball of grudges just waiting to go off.
But really, I think a president can do a lot of things and they just aren’t willing to. They have a goddamned “legal” extrajudicial kill list with no oversight. “Hey, you don’t want to vote for this set of constitutional reforms that, among other things, takes away my ability to have a kill list? I’ll take it that means you like kill lists, welcome to it.”
And you also have to hit a certain polling percentage. Which Lessig has not hit. There are pdfs of the bylaws online and I recommend watching grass grow.
I think he has just about as much of a claim to be in the debates as Chafee and O’Malley, or the other guy, whose name escapes me.
Which is to say, none. They’re an order of magnitude behind someone who isn’t even going to run.
I bet Al Gore would poll miles ahead of any of them if his name was included.
Gore totally would.
As an aside, a thought…
Start out with local politics, but a startup that hosts independent debates like twitch does for gaming. To start with you wouldn’t get any big names,but think about it–charge each candidate $250 to cover the cost of a real moderator, and get John Oliver to me tion the site.
Watch live, submit questions, and watch archived debates. Local news would eat it up.
The candidate we should get behind
(‘cause standing in front o’ him looks kinda dangerous)
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Has Lessig already announced a running mate? I don’t see any reason to seriously consider him until we know who we’re really electing when he steps down and who they will appoint as V.P.
It’s a bit absurd. I wish he had thought that out a bit more, doesn’t inspire confidence.
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From the article, it seems one of the points of contention was that he was not included in many polls making his support numbers seem artificially low. From the reading, it seems he believes if he was included in those polls he would have the 1% needed to attend the debate.
Well, then you and I clearly have different definitions of what a serious campaign entails. A single-issue stunt campaign, with the intention of resigning when that single issue is dealt with, is not something that I would consider to be a serious campaign. Because he doesn’t want to be president, he just wants his single issue dealt with. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the DNC to decide he’s not a suitable candidate when he has stated that he has no official position on any other issues, and would simply be a “trustee for the vice president”. How are those presidential debates going to go prior to the election? Do you just have the VP candidate up there debating against the RNC candidate? That’ll go over well. That’s what I’m talking about, when I say he’s not a serious candidate.
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Ok, I get what you are saying. Unless the candidate follows the same model of politicking that the rest of the field uses and the same one that has been failing us for so very long, they cannot be considered ‘serious’.
But you are right I would call an earnest and honest desire to reform the most damaging part of modern American politics a serious campaign rather than suggest that simply because the candidate does not fit the current political mold the campaign cannot be serious.
BTW, Wouldn’t it be kinda odd to see a single issue mandate candidate to have a position on any other issue? I’m not sure we can use that has a valid metric.
It is my suspicion that Lessig would be satisfied for any number greater than ZERO of the other candidates to pursue publicly financed election campaigns. The problem is,
Obama talked the talk, then abandoned the walk.
Might Biden be any different?
from: Joe Biden's Four-Decade Push to Get Money Out of Politics
"The Senator shows a healthy respect for money: “Politics is a damn expensive business. I had one hell of a time trying to raise money as a candidate. I had to put a second mortgage on our house to get that campaign started, and I ended up spending over $300,000 to get elected. I believe that public financing of federal election campaigns is the only thing that will insure good candidates and save the two-party system. It is the most degrading thing in the world to go out with your hat in your hand and beg for money, but that’s what you have to do if you haven’t got your own resources.”
On the downside, Biden talks about saving the two party system. I’d like to burn that to the ground.
I should look a bit more into how Lessig proposes to support public funding of multiple parties - including problematic far right wing ones.
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He might have been referring to preventing the two-party system from becoming the one-party system which it now largely is.
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https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-proposes-public-funding-of-campaigns/
Googled “sanders publicly financed elections,” these are the top two hits.
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You gonna ask @WearySky if he’ll stop beating his wife next?
I think the point that claiming you’ll devolve most of your power and decision making process to the VP and not announcing the VP at the same time is a worrying non-serious thing that deserves discussion. Just because Lessig has an outside the box solution to the same old model (the politics of failure have failed), does not mean his idea is necessarily a good one. He would have been better off continuing to focus on Mayday while skipping #3 (presidential run) and going to #4 (the Article V convention). All of these are difficult tasks to accomplish. Lessig has set himself up against a massive problem, but #3 was always the one with the longest odds. Better to spend the energy on #4 I think, but that’s me. He selects his own windmills.
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Don’t get me wrong bottleimp. I actually don’t support Lessig’s plan. But I do think it’s a serious effort on his part. He seems earnest and his career has had a fairly easy to track trajectory which lead him to this point.
I’m actually on board with the Wolf PAC plan to force a constitutional convention on the matter. But then again, there are plenty out there who think that idea isn’t a serious one either.
In the end, I don’t think it’s a problem with a binary solution. Most likely it will be a combination of ideas such as Lessigs, the work of TYT and the Wolf PAC, Sanders’ efforts, and more that will eventually bring the collective national mind to bear on the problem.
Didn’t he suggest that the second place person (assuming he is first) with DNC votes would be the VP? Or was that someone else? In other words, if Bernie got the second most votes he would make Bernie his VP.
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Sanders is most definitely pursuing a publicly financed election campaign. It’s a major element of his appeal, actually.
Oop – sorry, I see @bottleimp has already referenced that.
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