I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not counting Lessig). No one seriously thinks that Lindsey Graham is going to be the nominee, nor did anyone think that he could be the nominee when he ran. He's a single issue candidate (national security) and his agenda is make sure this issue is discussed during the primaries. The same thing with Santorum and Huckabee ("traditional values"). It's not a new phenomenon. Back in 1988, Pat Robertson ran with a "Christian conservative" agenda, but no one seriously thought that he was going to be president. His role was to highlight the power of the conservative evangelical Christians in the Republican party, thus causing the eventual nominee to (and the party as a whole) to pay attention to their issues. There's nothing with this tactic, and it may even be effective. But it seems like it's more prominent on the national stage in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.
The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.
Lessig seems to think that if he eked his way onto the stage of a televised Democratic debate, he'd have a chance of jump-starting a national political campaign on the issue of campaign finance.
But it's actually the reverse: you only get onto a debate stage if you already have a campaign. The polling criteria is not a gotcha. It's just the easiest way to ensure that only people with actual popular traction get stage time. The debate is not intended to be a "big intro" opportunity. There are other events for that, like the convention (Obama), or big events like the Prayer Breakfast (Ben Carson).
In part the difference in the numbers between the parties is simply that there is no clear favorite on the GOP side, while there is an overwhelming favorite on the Dem side. There are a lot of senior Democrats who have chosen to sit this one out rather than challenge Hillary.
Citizens United is probably doomed under Clinton if she's elected, no less than under Sanders. Demographically Kennedy, Scalia, or Thomas is likely to be replaced in the next five years and very likely in the next nine and CU hangs by a single vote on the Supreme Court.
Of course, reversing CU will actually make things worse from Lessig's stated perspective. With less independent money and with outside voices silenced, politicians will either be more entrenched with special interests or forced to spend even more time raising money from business executives. Unless you have a full restructuring of the system with public financing, most any plausible change isn't going to improve things.
I think that the US progressive establishment's fixation on the Citizen's United case is misguided.
I'm biased towards the idea that speech should be free, and tend to think that this should include spending money on making your view heard.
I think that effort could be better spend on attempting to fix the problem of wrong speech: if people are pushing political agendas using things that are factually incorrect that should be restricted. IANAL, but I think that this is likely to be more legally achievable in the US too: IS libel laws have a model of truth as a defense, and it seems to me this could be a framework for regulating false political speech.
But if you can explain how overturning Citizen's United wouldn't run into that problem while this idea I'd find that helpful.
OTOH, Libel in the US is already a thing. I'm saying extending those laws to make "the American people" a group that has standing, and falsehoods something that has harm. There is some existing precedent for that under libel.
It's easy to argue that corporations and unions don't deserve free speech as their directors, employees and members are all entitled to free speech individually.
However the press is different. Nobody, rightly so, wants to limit the press to say and print whatever they like (so long as it's not slander/libel) and today's press is made up of corporations.
How do we keep a free press and silence other corporations?
But I only forgot about it because I simply don't see how that matters in an real way.
Even if corporate personhood went away then (actual, real human) people would be paid to speak for a corporation, and then you hit the the 1st Amendment rights issues again.
There are proper campaign finance laws which regulate the above. Nothing is currently regulating SuperPACs at the moment, even American divisions of foreign corporations can accept money.
It's his own fault for being weak.
Repealing the First Amendment is a tremendously weighty decision, and not one whose prospect should fill anyone with optimism.
It would be quite easy to overturn Citizens United, a weak 5-4 decision borne of highly-questionable provenance, without touching the First Amendment in any way.
Come on, at least be intellectually honest.
They wanted to shadow-fund a TV ad campaign.
Clever of you to leave those facts out!
Wait, why would it be wrong to bash a politician around again?
Citizens United wasn't about speech. It was about unlimited anonymous money flooding our elections.
Nothing is wrong with criticizing a politician. That's obvious. But thanks for the clumsy obfuscation attempt.
Even the ACLU supported the Citizen's United decision. [1]
I think that's a terrible idea, and as long as Lessig is flogging it, he won't get my support.
That is exactly what I want. Why do you think it is a terrible idea? I'd eve hazard a guess that the money we save from reducing tax loop holes, bad contracts, subsidies and other pork could cover much of the cost of the public funding.
That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. I realize Sanders is less known for that and more known for democratic socialism, which is probably Lessig's hesitation. However, it always bothered me how little Lessig acknowledged the only candidate on either side with any chance of initiating campaign finance reform. If he really cared about campaign finance reform, he'd be out stumping for Sanders rather than this "running for president" publicity stunt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_l...
His Reddit answer boils down to "Bernie's plan won't work but I won't say why. My plan will work but I won't say way."