Lessig Out

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Cory oddly mum about it.

The thing that interests me about Lessig’s campaign is that two of the most aggressive promoters of liberal politics on the web, Marcos Moulitsos and Duncan Black, are fairly dismissive of campaign finance reform. Kos spends a lot of time tracking, and mocking, how Republican Super PAC money is spent (and fuming when Democrats spend their money on the same things), but Atrios I think sums up his disinterest in Lessig very cogently here:

I am certainly not going to claim that the influence of The Big Money on politics is not issue (tho I do think it’s a largely unsolvable whack-a-mole problem in which “solutions” are often potentially more problematic than the status quo), but still I ask… what issues?

We have a long history of goo-goos thinking that if only they reform the process then good governance will lead us to utopia. But you still have to spell out the utopia. Exactly what policies are being thwarted by The Big Money? What issues are you going to solve by solving the money problem, even if it’s solvable? What policies would be supported by a majority+ if not for The Big Money?

I am not saying there are no answers to this question. I can think of some plausibly true ones. But that’s how you make it appealing. “We would have X, if only we had campaign finance reform. We would have Y, if only we had campaign finance reform.” Ok. What are X and Y? Is that really true? Tell me what the rich bastards did or caused not to happen today.

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if lessig had joined the republican clown show/dumpster fire it would have been both more entertaining and informative.

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If Lessig had just run as a straight candidate instead of that absurd plan to resign and hand over to Random Q. Veep he might have got somewhere.

Although I still think it’s daft that the first elected office you go for is the top job.

I still like Lessig, but I don’t think he’s very realistic. I hope he sticks around to advise Sanders. That’s the kind of thing he should be doing.

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I’m trying to imagine taking someone who wasn’t at least a congressman or mayor (both of those being probably as low as I’d go) seriously as an applicant for the Oval Office. General maybe (unlikely to like them, but that’s probably not the worst qualification).

That the top runners in the Republican “Primary” are a trust-funder, and company slayer, and, uh, this guy just says what I think about the modern Republican Party…

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