Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School and the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University. Earlier this week he launched a committee to explore the possibility of running in the Democratic Primary to be a very different kind of president. As he explained then, the run would be a referendum around a very simple idea: that if, as Elizabeth Warren puts it, “the system is rigged,” then we need a plan to fix that rigged system.
His plan is a referendum. His candidacy would be a referendum. Elected with a single mandate to end this corrupted system, he would serve only as long as it takes to pass fundamental reform. He would then resign, and the vice president would become president.
The most common reaction to this obviously implausible idea is two words: Bernie Sanders. This is what Sanders is talking about. Sanders is doing the full court press against “the billionaires”. As The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel tweeted, “I’m a fan of Larry Lessig, but Bernie Sanders has made his entire, surging campaign a clear statement about clean elections.”
Lessig made this argument to Sanders directly, in the following confidential memo that was apparently leaked to Politico by the Sanders campaign.
Lessig argued:
Reform can’t be just one idea on a list. It can’t be something you talk about achieving “in the long run.” Nothing that you’re talking about doing is credible unless you achieve this reform first. What you need to do clearly is to demonstrate convincingly how you’re going to achieve at least the corruption, and voting parts of your program as the first thing you do.
This is important both politically and for credibility.
Politically: every Democrat is going to be talking about basically the same issues. You need to distinguish yourself from them by describing a credible plan to make certain these changes happen first.
Credibility: after the surge of support for you, the single strongest attack is going to be the “reality argument.” You’re talking about a string of reforms that simply cannot happen in the Washington of today. The “system is rigged.” If that rigging is good for anything, it is good for blocking basically everything you’re talking about.
The only response I’ve heard you give to that is that you’re beginning a revolution—making it sound like the mechanism of change is a bunch of people in the streets of D.C. Whether you believe that is possible or not, other people won’t. Indeed, talking like that only weakens your credibility.
The only credible way to talk about why you will get the change you want where no one else has or could is because you have a plan for making sure the “unrigging” of the “rigged system” happens first. If you have a convincing and credible plan for that, then the other changes you’re talking about don’t sound like mere fantasies.
Citizen equality can’t just be one issue on a list. It has to be the first issue—the one change that makes all other changes believable. For the first time in forever, The Wall Street Journal reports this issue is at the top of voters’ mind. You need to be the leader who makes it top of your platform as well.
To make any changes in Congress will require electing new faces with new ideas. But that does not mean more Democrats or Republicans, but more Independents. Just 5 in the Senate will change the dynamics of Congress. The major party's will lose their majority, and maybe the congressional gridlock will get broken. The House will require around 30 new independent members, which will take a number of elections cycles.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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