Democratic machine won't let Larry Lessig into the debates; will Sanders stand up for him?

What is your position on other political issues?
Not relevant. The policy that I would work to enact is the Citizen Equality Act of 2017, and the other policy work I would do would be as trustee for the vice president.

2 Likes

Sometimes a few degrees makes a big difference in a long haul.
In former Defense Secretary Robert Gatesā€™ book, Gates offerred candid opinions on both:

Gates recounts working with Hillary Clinton: He found himself ā€œalmost always in agreementā€ with her.

Gatesā€™ portrayal of Vice President Joe Biden: ā€œwrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.ā€

Lessig is very focused, if nothing else :smiley:

Not when the system is this far off course. The Illusion of Differenceā„¢ can be more damaging then no difference. That is what weā€™ve been fed for my entire lifetime, the illusion of choice, both choices having their strings pulled by the same system of power. The choices have always been do you want The Sameā„¢ or The Same Liteā„¢. No we donā€™t want either, at least I donā€™t.

1 Like

Also, from the same page:

Who will be your vice president?
There are any number of excellent candidates, including those running now, as well as others. But the ultimate choice will be made by the Democratic Party Convention.

How will you pick your vice president?
The decision of the convention should reflect the expressed and understood views of the members of the Democratic Party.

So basically, heā€™s totally abdicating responsibility for his VP, whose policy platform will be the one heā€™s actually proposing to enact, although he thinks itā€™s irrelevant.

I think he needs to ask the Democrats to tell him who his running mate will be, and to let that person appear in the debates.

2 Likes

It was part of Obamaā€™s appeal and we know how that went

That appears to be the actual plan, but Lessig is getting hung up on the small but crucial detail of getting on to the debate stage with his cohort of potential Veeps.

I encourage them to rip their faces off on television.

1 Like

Finally, some must see TV.

1 Like

Is it? Has Lessig announced his running mate? If Lessig were saying, ā€œThis person will be my running mate, and they will be the president if I win, and I think they deserve a place on the debating stageā€ that would, in my mind, be different than saying ā€œI deserve a place on a debating stage.ā€

1 Like

Soā€¦ youā€™re arguing that the fact that Lessig is a single issue candidate makes him the only one for whom support of campaign fiance reform is meaningful?

This just seems to reduce down to Obama failed, so Sanders canā€™t do it, therefore Lessig must also be given voice on campaign finance reform because he is the Kwisatz Haderach and the only one who can make the campaign finance reform flow? It feels both circular and disingenuous for you to say that there are no people campaigning on finance reform, get shown that Sanders has it as a major plank in his platform and then turn around and say that Sanders doesnā€™t count because Obama talked about it and didnā€™t make it happen. If that is how you treat this, there is no point to the discussion because anyone else can come in with a campaign finance reform platform, even another outsider candidate, and I have to suppose youā€™ll just respond that they donā€™t count and only Lessig counts.

Also, how is it going to look on TV when he passes on a bunch of questions by saying he thinks campaign finance reform is more important, or just pivots to campaign finance reform. Heā€™d get several minutes for each question, is he going to have enough material to actually fill each two minute segments with new stuff about campaign finance reform or will he simply restate the same condensed talking points each time? Wonā€™t either response annoy the voters watching?

2 Likes

If this election ends up being Jeb vs Hillary that is pretty much the USA admitting to the rest of the world that democracy in a capitalistic society does not work and that our government is just a facade for neo-facism/neo-corporatism which is what many political annalists have already claimed that the USA is. The first time I heard this was from Noam Chomsky, and I thought it couldnā€™t be right until I read up on what those are and realized that is EXACTLY what the USA has become.

5 Likes

On the contrary: thatā€™s exactly how democracy works. Look at the range of options available to Republican party members; who would you choose as an electable candidate? A popularity contest ā€“ and letā€™s be clear, Hillary is pretty popular, despite what some people think ā€“ is not ā€œneo-fascistā€. Iā€™d be sad if we ended up with another Bush vs. Clinton race. A lot can happen in over a year, but honestly, I donā€™t see it going that way.

Bush is toast. Heā€™ll drop out before long. If the Republicans decide to pick an actual politician as a candidate, itā€™ll be Rubio.

1 Like

au-contraire, a democracy is not what we have. We have a two party system where potential candidates are pre-selected by and beholden to corporate lobbies and private money. power isnā€™t divided in proportion to votes as it is in other countries with true democracies. We donā€™t even select which of those two are elected, the electoral collage does, and they are not obligated to vote the same as their constitutions do, add gerrymandering and other factors into our system and we actually donā€™t have a democracy at all. that is a political myth. we also donā€™t have a republic. now look up fascist corporativism, ah ha, wow does that describe what we have to a T.

Iā€™m not the best person to explain this, but a large portion academic political analysts classify the US government as such.

3 Likes

What if I told you House Harkonnen won awhile backā€¦ Um no, my entire point here is to emphasize the overwhelming importance of Lessigā€™s single platform plank and how important it is that it NOT be lost in the shuffle, again.

1 Like

Heā€™s thirsty to serve

4 Likes

I will make sure to wear a industrial grade tinfoil hat before rereading that or the links. Thank you!

save your tinfoil, no conspiracy here. just academia.

3 Likes

[citation needed]

All Iā€™m seeing is are two links to Wikipedia definitions of corporatism and democracy. The corporatism has an entry on fascist corporatism, but that entry focuses on Italy in WWII and while it mentions other countries, none of them are the U.S. Neo-corporatism is defined separately in the article, and that does have mentions of the U.S.

Iā€™m not saying there arenā€™t corporatist aspects to the U.S. system right now, but the word fascism gets thrown around pretty casually by a lot of people, and Iā€™d like to read some of these academics.

1 Like