No mention of pardons? That’s just being disingenuous. Every president in recent memory has some baggage there.
Oh yeah, Pardons! And Diplomatic Dinners! And Motorcades!
Probably more I missed too.
1 Like
Sure, sure. But maybe we shouldn’t be bringing all that up. I don’t think we’re supposed to be critical of the left wing. (Certainly not here)
Cynical though that sounds, if we elected Larry (whom I actually have donated several hundreds of dollars to), I fully expect the same crap to some extent.
So, legislation takes 3-6 months to get from a bill to being signed by the President. During that time, is he going to put Vladimir Putin, ISIS, and climate change “on hold”?
And, again, no major bill initiated by a Democratic President is going to be allowed to pass by a Republican Senate (unless of course it contains riders that mandate oilwells and firearms on all property, public and private).
Larry Lessig’s “consideration” is dopey beyond belief.
2 Likes
If he could pull it off it’s got a shot.
Assuming he turned it into a wave election and got majorities the Dems would likely back de-gerrymandering, established Democrats would still be safe but new Democrats would realize that’s the only way to survive the returning of the wave.
As for the funding the legislators might be amendable as I’m sure they hate spending all their time running around sucking up to doners.
Of course he doesn’t have a hope in hell and I’m pretty sure he knows it, I suspect the true aim is to build up enough of a profile that the ideas enter the political dialogue. If they play well enough with the electorate there’s a good shot someone will toss them into their platform.
1 Like
so who’s his VP candidate? kind of matters if he’s resigning
11 Likes
Two words: Barack Obama.
It isn’t going to happen. But if he were to be elected, he would simply be the most ignored president in US history. It would be a bigger fiasco than Madison’s victory celebration during the 1812-14 war.
What risk?
Before you can tackle national corruption you have got to tackle local corruption that gets these people elected. You have to get the fearful people to vote against militarising the police, arbitrary arrest, murder by the police without consequences, city hall corruption, Citizens United, and lobbying with benefits.
This isn’t being negative; Lessig’s approach is basically élitist, top down (let me have the top job and I will fix the problems.) Whatever you think of Lenin he had the right idea; revolution must be bottom up. Change must begin factory by factory, street by street.
Lenin’s original ideas were profoundly democratic; they changed to dictatorship when the establishment fought back. But I don’t see how the Lessig approach can possibly work because all the levers of power stay with the status quo. If the political institutions really wanted to sideline the President they would do it.
As a good example, Wilhelm II of Germany was in theory an absolute monarch. In practice, his ministers were able to ignore him - unless his views could be made to coincide with theirs.
Hitler, on the other hand, made sure he had a private army before he seized power.
2 Likes
Obama had some big tentpoles, but ran nothing like a referendum candidacy. Republicans were able to hand-wave his landslide victory in many different ways to avoid admitting the mandates he rode in on. The largest of which was hammering “hope and change” into a vague negative to distract from the very specific policies he trumpeted. This is enough of a difference to render the comparison pretty weak.
No time to watch a video right now, but is there anything in there about the electoral college?
1 Like
Um…
…and that’s just this year, so far.
Although I guess technically you’re right that the “left wing” doesn’t get criticized much here, because technically the Obama administration is pretty center-right, and in the US there isn’t really much of a “left wing” to criticize.
11 Likes
You say that as if congress doesn’t routinely go off the rails for months at a time while they “investigate” an issue like Planned Parenthood, Benghazi, or some other farce used to distract people for things like SOPA and the TPP.
6 Likes
An elegant candidate from a more civilized age.
This is an quixotic if unworkable idea. It’s great to say he will stay around until one thing is passed and then quit. However life tends to not go according to plan. Until his referendum is passed, he will have to deal with whatever crises arise. The fact is that thanks to the Supreme Court deciding that corporations are people too, it will take a constitutional amendment to give equal access to the voters. Thanks to the Supreme Court, money=speech and so it is harder to institute election reform. This is an interesting idea, but I honestly don’t see how it can be achieved. Yes, there would be a referendum for change. That referendum would have to be passed by people who will lose their job if it passes. It will have to be voted on by the very legislatures that get and keep their jobs by gerrymandering. I wish him well, but I think this is unlikely to happen.
1 Like
So I just went and watched the video. A couple of thoughts.
- It got posted yesterday, and as of this morning (8:52 am EST) it’s
got 318 views. So there’s that. - I’d worry it’s a “Nader” (I can’t
imagine Republicans voting for him (mandate or no- and also, aren’t
you by default voting for president by who he names his vice
president? which re-introduces partisanship into the mix…)
3 Likes
Pretty much what your father said. Carter was probably one of the most moral, stand-up guys we’ve ever had in the Oval Office. He was also a straight-talker. Not in a “tough love” way, but in a “calmly tell you the truth, no matter how bad it is” way, which made him an easy target of other politicians and the media.
He also had the unfortunate job of dealing with a serious economic downturn, an energy shortage, as well as the hostage situation in the US embassy in Tehran. Overall, Carter’s presidency is a case of a really good guy in a really bad situation.
7 Likes
How about elect Bernie Sanders and prove that you don’t need corporate money to win. That is, instead of passing laws that say you can’t do something and that might be overturned by and overly politicized court, just show that in reality the will of the many is stronger than the money of the few. Do something instead of saying you are going to do it.
The president cannot enact laws. I mean, I can think of ways the president can enact laws (start putting opposing members of congress on no fly lists, pardoning criminals in their districts, maybe even add them the kill list, etc., until they submit) but I don’t think Lessig would go that far, and I don’t think that Republicans in congress would respond to anything less, particularly not against a threat to end their gravy train.
5 Likes
After electing a Black Muslim why not a Jewish president? 
Oy this timeline…
Sigh. I quite like what Lessig is attempting, but here’s the rub. We have horribly gerrymandered districts in a lot of (most?) places, and campaign finance reform can’t change much in a district that is so heavily skewed to one side that the other side is never going to get elected.
My brother runs campaigns, and he once told me that if a district doesn’t have at most a 48-52% split he doesn’t consider it a competitive district. Without competitive districts, you can’t have real debates about real issues; you end up with the stupidity that we see in Fox Republican debates.
Campaign finance reform is definitely key, but you need competitive districts to make change. That’s why I stopped contributing to Lessig’s PAC - I contributed initially because I liked the ideas, but I felt like he didn’t choose his fights particularly well. I suppose it’s difficult to find candidates who are trustworthy and willing to commit to his agenda, but some of those campaigns didn’t have a chance in hell just because of their districts.
It’s a good goal, but I don’t think it can create real change without fixing our districting issues, first.
No, convincing voters one at a time.
It’s great as a stunt to get attention for these problems; it’s a terrible idea to toy with the office like that (if he’s serious). First, it won’t work as planned, as pointed out by others, without the cooperation of Congress. I also think it’s depressing to contemplate a replacement election so soon after he wins; it would prolong the terrible agony of watching unhinged Republicans bloviate for another election cycle.
People could just support Bernie Sanders in the primaries and caucuses as he pretty much supports the same things.
And the Grammar Nazi in me must out that in the piece "…to vote Democrat " should be “…to vote Democratic”. The GOP purposely uses Democrat incorrectly just to tweak Democrats. Don’t buy into that bullshit.
2 Likes
Carter has always been up front about his Christianity and, back then, gun toting, nationalistic, money grubbing, judgmental, proselytizing elitists had yet to gel as the dominating force in the GOP. Pop probably just figured he was a man of God and therefore worthy of some respect.
Things were a quite bit tamer then, when lifelong friendships like Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch’s were allowed to form (Gingrich put a stop to that). When push came to shove, the friends could often hammer out a deal everyone could live with over a family weekend at the shore.
