Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig started his 2016 presidential campaign bid with the concept of becoming the first “referendum president,” with his sole purpose being to remove the power of big money in politics. The idea, however, was proved unattractive by many voters who raised concerns about Lessig stepping down as soon as the issue is resolved through a constitutional amendment.
With that, Lessig went back to the drawing board and shared his proclamation as a candidate with The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur in an interview recorded Monday:
The Democratic party won’t take me seriously because I said I was going to resign. I will not resign. I give up that promise and now let’s talk seriously about that issue (influence of money in politics).
In the past few weeks, Lessig hinted at the idea of suspending his bid within the Democratic party and instead running as an independent prior to officially deciding to move to a fully-functional campaign.
Even after raising over one million dollars within a month-long period, Lessig wasn’t invited to the first Democratic debate on October 13th in Las Vegas because he didn’t meet the required 1 percent in the polls.
However, Lessig explained that many respected polls didn’t include him in the polls. This was in part due to what he described as the crickets from the Democrats. Lessig said that from the start, there was no press release from the Democratic National Committee welcoming him, a courtesy which was shared to all other major candidates. This, he says, is the main reason why many major polls didn’t take him seriously, therefore not including him the polls.
Lessig explained that he doesn’t know what the rules are for the upcoming November 14 debate, but reiterated that he is not included in a majority of the polls.
Watch the interview below.
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