Konveyor Belt wrote:People should stop giving him publicity. It's clear his run will go nowhere and he will only suck away votes from worthier candidates.
Apparently they talked about him for about 5 minutes on
The Rachel Maddow Show last night, though he didn't appear personally. I guess they don't give him much of a shot, but he'll be included in some of the next few polls, FWIW. (Don't worry though, as long as Jimbo's involved he won't get much above 0.0%.)
He might take some votes away from Bernie Sanders in the primaries, but I doubt it'll be enough to be the most significant cause of Bernie actually losing any primaries.
I've said elsewhere (though I can't find the specific post at the moment) that I don't blame Lessig for doing this, and that aside from Jimbo being a terrible choice to run anything, his involvement isn't something I'd consider wrong for him to be doing either. That said, the points being made now about how if he does somehow win, Lessig's "mandate" won't necessarily translate into legislation, are completely salient. If the Republicans maintain control of both houses of Congress, they'll basically laugh at him. And even if the Democrats manage to win back both houses next year, which is very unlikely even with that many people actually deciding to vote for Lessig, he'll still have a hard time getting
them to do this stuff. Whoever is in Congress, ultimately he'll have to try shaming them into doing it, and very few of these people have any shame.
And finally, from conspiracy-land, given that Lessig teaches at Harvard, you almost have to wonder if
stories like this one from Slate.com aren't just a coinkydink.
