Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig has ended his nascent bid to become the Democrats' nominee for president, despite some remarkable fundraising and outreach. Citing the Democratic National Committee's last minute rules change for qualifying to get into the party's next debate, Dr. Lessig says he is at a distinct disadvantage, one he sees no way of overcoming.
It seems Lessig realized that his anti-corruption, get money out of politics theme could not catch on with voters if he couldn't get his time along side the other candidates.
"I may be known in tiny corners of tubes of the Internets," he admitted in a video released Monday, "but I am not well known to the American public, generally. Our only chance to make this issue central to the 2016 presidential election, was to be in those debates."
Lessig blames the DNC because they changed how far back the polling had to go to be included in the show. After originally saying they would go back to polling in the six weeks leading up to the debate, which would be October 10th, they decided last week to modify the criterion as at least six weeks before the debate.
"Under this new rule, I am just shut out," he said
People who have been paying attention to Democratic polls will note that even though Vice President Joe Biden, who never announced he would run, was included in those polls, Dr. Lessig was left out.
"Unless we can time travel," he says, "there is no way that I can qualify."
Lessig's endeavor began with a bang, promising to run only if his crowdfunding website could raise a million dollars by Labor Day, which it did, with no problem. But, arguably, it was the nature of his original campaign that doomed it from the start.
When he first announced his run, Lessig promised he would stay in office only long enough to get his pet issue, getting money out of the political process, passed into law. Once that was done, he said, he would resign. He called it "A Referendum to Restore Democracy."
"The candidate is the referendum," he explained in his August announcement. "The campaign is for that referendum."
Not surprisingly, there were more than a few who found the strategy doubtful. He finally realized that himself, telling Bill Maher, last month, on his HBO series, Real Time, "Yeah, that was stupid. That was totally stupid," and, he added, in obeisance to the party, "Like my daughter would say, 'Fine. You win. I withdraw that promise.'"
It took a few more days for his name to show up in the polling. By then, under the DNC rule change, it was too late.
Still, Lessig insists he will continue the fight to fix our democracy. "We can't solve any of the problems that this nation must address," he said, like climate change and Wall Street reform, "until we fix the crippled and corrupted institution of Congress first."
The fight's not over. As usual, the people must lead.
-PBG