"Good. You just can't run for president based on a fantasy that there's only one issue that matters."

"In the real world, there's no way around the fact that the president has to deal with multiple issues every day, and the people won't accept a president who doesn't take the whole job seriously."

Says my son John, commenting on the news that Lawrence Lessig has dropped out of the presidential race. The reason Lessig gives is not, however, that people won't accept a candidate with a single-issue campaign, but that he never became well-known enough, and he blames the Democratic Party for excluding him from the debates.

But I wouldn't criticize the Party for failing to open up the debates for the purpose of helping advocates of single issues. And my reason is precisely what John is talking about: I don't take this person seriously as a real candidate.

Lawrence Lessig says the NYT "'dumbs down' the debate radically to blame Republicans for everything."

"No doubt, the Republican leadership often goes where the money is. And so too do the Democrats. The focus shouldn’t be on one of these two money-sensitive-parties. It should be on changing the system that makes money in policy so effective. "

He's criticizing a specific NYT editorial that complains about a provision in the Affordable Care Act that it says, incorrectly, is there "at Republican insistence."