Screwing with the Democratic Party : Fear and loathing on champagne trail as a Bernie Sanders admirer travels to Elizabeth Warren utopia

Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders (Credit: AP/Demis Maryannakis/Charles Dharapak/Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Photo montage by Salon)

With around 250 in attendance, the event room at Civic Hall is packed. I’m actually part of the overflow, watching Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig’s presentation on massive closed-circuit TVs in the foyer, in merciful proximity to the hors d’oeuvres and wine (an unostentatious but delicious spread, including good cheese and reasonably priced champagne).

The breathless cadence of a TED Talk is unmistakable, and Lessig’s impassioned case for Elizabeth Warren is fraught with urgency. There is no mention of electoral strategy or political details, but the presentation is highly visual, with a powerpoint on the monitors behind him that opens with a clear blue sky and rolling clouds. It looks a desktop wallpaper for Windows 98. Words and phrases flash on the monitors behind him for emphasis–”standup,” “most powerful” and “brand,” to name a few, while Lessig expounds on inequality, money in politics and the forgettable neologism, “Tweedism,” a reference to Boss Tweed’s manipulation of politics. To his credit, his jokes get laughs.

Lessig’s emphatic-but-never-antagonistic oratory stylings were in fact forged in the fires of TED, an origin betrayed by an overly-earnest tone, an unchallenging vocabulary and an anti-elitist denunciation of “wonks.” “It is a moral challenge, not a nerd’s challenge,” he proclaims–a strange sentiment at an event in celebration of Elizabeth Warren, a brilliantly wonky nerd herself. As a legal activist Lessig first made his name fighting onerous copyright law and co-founding Creative Commons, a groundbreaking open-source initiative that allows users to license and share media. In 2007 he switched gears, refocusing on “money in politics”–campaign finance and corporate lobbying.

Before Lessig spoke, it was Van Jones at the lectern, emphasizing how Warren would ameliorate the primaries by sharpening her opponents. “She would improve the country just by being in the debates! You don’t debate Elizabeth Warren without eating your Wheaties!” he proclaims, and I can’t help but reminisce on his political journey. It’s an age-old story. One minute you’re a simple Maoist Third-Worldist, dutifully recording every minute of your 18-person organization (for revolutionary posterity), the next you’re a disgraced environmental czar. Eventually, though, you find your home, carrying water for truant politicians and posing for photos at the White House Correspondents Dinner with a jowly, starched golem of bad ideas and his strange bird-wife.

 

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