{"id":23260,"date":"2015-11-03T03:41:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T08:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=23260"},"modified":"2015-11-03T03:44:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T08:44:27","slug":"larry-lessig-is-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/23260\/larry-lessig-is-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Lessig is Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larry Lessig, the Harvard Law professor who launched a quixotic, long-shot, single-issue, “so-crazy-it-just-might-work”\u00a0campaign for president<\/a> on Labor Day after raising $1 million (give or take<\/a>*) online from his supporters, has decided to drop out<\/a> of the race.<\/p>\n

That’s too bad. With Lessig exiting the contest, that leaves the Democrats with only three candidates to prattle on<\/a> about the evils<\/a> of money in politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lessig explains in a short video<\/a> to his supporters that he needed to break into the Democratic presidential primary debates if he had any hope of running something resembling a credible campaign. He has some further thoughts<\/a> on his blog: “There\u2019s a reality that the will to reform can\u2019t bend \u2014 like mortgage payments.”<\/p>\n

“It is now clear that the party won\u2019t let me be a candidate,” he says in the video. “And I can\u2019t ask people to support a campaign that I know can\u2019t even get before the members of the Democratic Party \u2014 or to ask my team or my family to make a sacrifice even greater than what I\u2019ve already made,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Lessig also displays some of the belated self-awareness that had come to characterize his campaign. “I may be known in tiny corners of the tubes of the Internets, but I am not well known to the American public generally,” Lessig said.<\/p>\n

When he first got into the race, he promised to resign the presidency just as soon as Congress passed his campaign finance reform bill. (Cough.) At some point, he realized that was a “totally stupid” idea and jettisoned it. But campaign finance remained the driving purpose, the anima<\/em>, the lodestar of Lessig’s campaign.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Lessig’s pitch<\/a> is the belief that the vast majority of Americans want to eliminate or vastly curtail “big money in politics.” In the TED talk that marked Lessig’s “coming out” as a campaign-finance crusader, he cited a poll in which 96 percent of Americans said it\u2019s \u201cimportant to reduce the influence of money in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more recent New York Times<\/em>\/CBS News Poll<\/a> of American adults (the least trustworthy of demographics for polling purposes) found 46 percent of respondents think the campaign finance rules need “a complete overhaul.” Another 39 percent said “fundamental changes” are in order.<\/p>\n

And yet the supposed demand never quite pans out. Lessig barely cracked 1 percent in the polls. Democrats Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Webb, who dropped out of the race last week, didn’t do much better. But because the Democratic National Committee changed the way it evaluates a candidate’s polling to determine participation in the televised debates, Lessig had no chance of getting any meaningful national exposure.<\/p>\n

Of Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley’s campaign finance reform proposals, Lessig said: “Until we end the corruption that has crippled Congress, none of their promises are even credible.\u201d If so, then his promises were even less credible. The others at least have a constituency.<\/p>\n

Just last week, the Times<\/em> reported how Lessig’s campaign “endures in relative obscurity”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Despite raising more money than Mr. Chafee, Mr. Webb and several Republicans, Mr. Lessig\u2019s candidacy is not considered serious by many analysts or party leaders, who see him as an activist and gadfly. He did not dispel that notion when he introduced himself as a \u201creferendum\u201d candidate who would step down as president once he managed to overhaul the campaign finance system.<\/p>\n

After spending years defending Internet freedom, he came to see corruption in politics as a monster that must be defeated, and he did not let go of the cause. Last year, Mr. Lessig started a \u201csuper PAC to end all super PACs,\u201d and in September, he set his sights on the White House.<\/p>\n

Back at Harvard, where he is on leave, Mr. Lessig\u2019s cause has been met with a mix of bemusement, encouragement and concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarry\u2019s a terrific guy, but I don\u2019t think that because you have a very important project, that therefore you should be in charge of all the millions of things the president is in charge of, including foreign policy,\u201d said Charles Fried, a conservative Harvard Law School professor who gave Mr. Lessig $100 anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to OpenSecrets<\/a>, Professor Lessig raised the most money (around\u00a0$93,000<\/a>)\u00a0from the Boston area. “Donors from a Cambridge zip code were the most generous.”<\/p>\n

Perhaps he’ll have better luck next year<\/a> with his Mayday PAC.<\/p>\n

*For what it’s worth, Lessig took umbrage<\/a> and responded to the Washington Free Beacon<\/em>‘s reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Lessig, the Harvard Law professor who launched a quixotic, long-shot, single-issue, “so-crazy-it-just-might-work”\u00a0campaign for president on Labor Day after raising $1 million (give or take*) online from his supporters, has decided to drop out of the race. That’s too bad. With Lessig exiting the contest, that leaves the Democrats with only three candidates to prattle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4739,2030,1685,716,4738],"class_list":["post-23260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2016-presidential-election","tag-campaign-finance-reform","tag-democrat","tag-first-amendment","tag-larry-lessig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23260"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23270,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260\/revisions\/23270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}