Lawrence Lessig

Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig's Politico "Big Idea" essay yesterday tackled something that's been worrying many of us-- how severely divided we are as a people inside fundamentally dysfunctional political system. The essay is based on his book about creating a moral, unified America, They Don't Represent Us. He identifies 5 fundamental non-partisan problems of our democracy that are "all dimensions of a democracy which means that we are not, as citizens, equal with anybody else," and that must be tackled before we can move forward:

You probably remember Zephyr Teachout's spectacular run against Andrew Cuomo in 2014. He beat her in the big city machine counties but she won Albany, where they know him best and she won up and down the Hudson Valley as well. In fact, of the 11 counties that make up NY-19, the seat Chris Gibson is giving up at the end of the year, Zephyr won 10. The biggest county in the district is Ulster, where she beat Cuomo 69.95% to 27.41%. Dutchess is the second biggest county and she beat him there 57.51%- 40.36%. The comes Rensselaer where it was Zephyr 63.42%, Cuomo 33.02%.

-by Dorothy ReikDebbie Wasserman Schultz has gotten away with so much that she thought she was invincible. As a Florida state senator she drew herself a congressional seat in southeastern Broward County and the northern Biscayne Bay shoreland of Miami Dade.

This week's guest on Bill Moyers shows were two academics-- Zephyr Teachout And Larry Lessig-- who "decided to practice what they preached. They left the classroom, confronted the reality of down-and-dirty politics, and tried to replace moneyed interests with the public interest." Teachout stunned Andrew Cuomo and his backers by winning over a third of the vote and 30 of New York's 62 counties. She won Ulster County with 70%, Schoharie County with 71.7%, Columbia County with 77.9% and Albany County, where they know Cuomo best, with 61.9%. Cuomo spent $60.62 per vote.

For our final push, Blue America ran independent expenditures in 4 races, two for Senate seats and two in House races. When Adelson and his slimy allies jumped into the CA-33 race with a million dollars worth of racist smear against Ted Lieu, we decided to reach likely voters with a full page ad in the L.A. Times, which we think has worked very well. Early vote returns from Democrats started spiking very sharply as soon as the ad ran.

Fred Upton only agreed, reluctantly, to one debate— and only after Paul Clements started gaining tremendous traction in the southwest Michigan 6th congressional district. Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune that once— but no longer— was the biggest employer in the area, doesn’t like being questioned or reminded of his record. Shipping all those Whirlpool jobs— i.e., Republican-backed “outsourcing”— doesn’t go over well with his constituents.Western Michigan along the 94 in towns from Three Oaks, New Buffalo, Sawyer up through Benton Harbor and St.

The most likely House seat in Michigan to go from Red to Blue is the 6th district in the southwest corner of the state, Fred Upton’s district. The PVI is R+1. Obama won the district against McCain 184,186 (53%) to 156,835 (45%) in 2008. Senator Debbie Stabenow won the district. Senator Carl Levin won the district. Today polling shows that Democratic senatorial candidate Gary Peters is beating GOP nut job Terri Lynn Land in MI-06 by double digits.

Founded in 1961, MIRS— Michigan Informantion and Research Service— isn’t meant to be for everyone.

Blue America planned to run a 60 second radio spot statewide in South Dakota based on the “Hit The Road, Joop” song (above). But the radio stations refused to take the ad. OK, we’ve faced that in every election cycle. This time we turned to Google. The idea is to get as many South Dakota voters as possible to listen to the song. The deal Google gave us has brought us over 100,000 impressions since October 2 and we only get charged when someone listens to at least 30 seconds of the song.

It's almost a truism of today's politics that "one man, one vote" has been replaced with "one dollar, one vote." We'll know we've recaptured our democratic form of government when that changes, when we no longer have a Supreme Court-- not to mention the two other branches of government-- made up of corporate whores whose idea of "balance" involves balancing the rights and privileges of corporations and Big Business against the rights and privileges of American citizens.