Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig says that the Democratic Party presidential primary is ignoring the issues of crony capitalism and campaign finance reform. “It is really astonishing…that we have not yet had a question that addresses the crony capitalism problem” in the Democratic debates, Lessig said Monday morning.
Lessig was equally scathing about the budget deal that passed last week.
“It’s ridiculous. And it’s filled with all the payoffs to the people that funded their campaigns over the last two years, and that they need to fund them for the next two years….This is the clearest signal the system is still broken.”
Lessig, who recently mounted his own insurgent presidential campaign focused on the issue of campaign finance, joined Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily to analyze the presidential debates and the primacy thus far.
He pointed out that Hillary Clinton was deeply vulnerable on campaign finance reform.
“If she opens her mouth on reforming the system, that would be an invitation to focus back on her and her husband,” Lessig said. He added that while he agrees with Bernie Sanders on many issues: “he has not yet raised what a remedy to this would be.”
Lessig’s own solution is “bottom-up, citizen funding of elections,” which he used in his own campaign, and which is the focus of his research and public advocacy.
Lessig pointed out that “real liberals and real conservatives” were demanding a fair fight, “not who happens to have the biggest pile of crony money that they can flush into the system.”
He added that those who want reform, on both left and right, share the same goal.
“We have one common purpose, and that is to make America great,” he said.
Hear the whole interview:
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