"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.

Donald Trump says super PACs are "a big, fat scam."

On "State of the Union" this morning:

TAPPER: You issued a statement this week disavowing all super PACs that are out there in your name, requesting that they return all of the donations and calling on all presidential candidates to do the same. Why?

TRUMP: It's a scam. It's a big, fat scam. These super PACs are a disaster. I have -- I think they said nine or 10 super PACs were set up in my name. I don't even know who these people are. You have all these people raising money, I guess in the name of Trump, that we love Trump. And some of them, I'm sure, do, and probably some of them don't. And I have no idea what they are going to do with the money they are raising. But they are raising all of this money, and they're going to spend it on the campaign. And we have -- you know, the candidates are not supposed to be involved and all this stuff, but they have all this money going. Nobody even knows who the people are. Nobody knows where they are. Nobody knows what they're doing with the money. It's a whole big scam. If you look at Ben Carson, Ben Carson is spending money from super PACs all over the place. Now I hear his super PACs are going to merge. I have heard that his super PACs are essentially running his campaign in Iowa, where they are actually running his campaign, where they are doing all of the ground work and everything. That's not what the purpose of a super PAC was supposed to be. And, by the way, Jeb Bush, the same thing -- he's got one of his best friends that heads up his super PAC. And I'm calling on all candidates to disavow their super PACs. It's a scam. They know it. It's a joke. I mean, it's a joke. They're all laughing about it. I laugh about it. 

It sounds as though Trump, not needing money the way the other candidates do, would like to undercut the power of super PACs to raise money. It's the other candidates who need that money flow.

"Gov. Scott Walker on Friday signed legislation that prohibits prosecutors from using secret John Doe investigations to review allegations of political corruption and misconduct of public officials."

"The bill, which passed the Senate and the Assembly along party lines this week, comes after two John Doe probes of Walker, his campaign and his aides. Walker was never charged."

ALSO: "The lead prosecutor in the halted John Doe probe into Gov. Scott Walker’s recall campaign had doubts about his legal theory in November 2013, a month after issuing nearly three dozen subpoenas and search warrants, according to documents filed Thursday in a related lawsuit...."

Is it bad that "Conservative PACs Attack Republicans, and It Pays"?

Eric Lipton and Jennifer Steinhauer write in the NYT about petitions like "Boot Boehner,” “Dump McConnell,” “Drop a Truth-Bomb on Kevin McCarthy,” and “Fire Paul Ryan” that come from "conservative websites and bloggers who have helped stoke a grass-roots rebellion to make Congress more conservative" and who use the petitions to raise money for their own on-going effort.

“This is clearly an organized effort and an attempt by these groups to raise money for themselves,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who added that she was the target of a similar attack during the 2013 Senate debate over gun safety legislation. “They hurt our party, they hurt our Congress and they hurt our country.”...

Campaign finance documents examined by The New York Times show that the PACs and other groups running many of these petition drives have a history of spending most of the money they raise on consulting firms, as opposed to using it to support political candidates, a stark contrast to how most PACs function.

The efforts employ similar tactics. Conservative outlets like Breitbart or The Washington Examiner are given “exclusive” advance notice of a new effort, like the “Remove John Boehner” campaign started early last year by the Tea Party Leadership Fund....

I'm puzzling over what's supposed to be bad here. What's wrong with political activity in support of an ideology and what's wrong with trying to take down politicians you oppose instead of looking for politicians to boost? Is it that the political group is able to raise funds for itself and keep its operation going rather than to use the money to get people elected? Isn't this kind of ideological activity done on both the left and the right? The only problem I can detect — and this isn't in the article — is that it works best at the political extremes: moderates and realists can't use it.

Elaborate NYT graphic makes me think something quite different from what they want me to think.

"Here are 120 million Monopoly pieces, roughly one for every household in the United States," says the text, and we see a large pile of green Monopoly "houses" (blocking the view of the White House), and when we try to scroll down, the screen zooms in, and we see a few red Monopoly "hotels" on the top of the pile. The text changes to: "Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House."

This is a great graphic. Loved it. But it got me thinking, and I read this:

They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters... Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

Now, first of all, we're talking about spending money on speech, that's what Citizens United "legalized." I'm putting "legalized," in quotes, because what the Supreme Court did in Citizens United was to perceive the existence of a constitutional right, a right to spend money on speech. These are not contributions to the presidential campaigns, but companies [in Citizens United and families and their companies in the NYT study] spending their own money to get their opinions out into the marketplace of ideas, just as The New York Times corporation spends its money to get its ideas out, including its idea that there's something spurious about corporations engaging in political speech.

And, second, if we're talking about families — 158 families — how are they "overwhelmingly... male"? Are there a lot of gay men spending this money or just heterosexual couples who somehow produce far more sons than daughters? Or is it that the NYT is operating within the old stereotype that sees a family with a man in it as headed by the man?

That said, what I really want to talk about is that pile of Monopoly houses, far, far outnumbering the hotels. There are 120 million households, and 158 spend half of what is  spent, and amount that's only $176 million. If all of the households gave just $5, that would be $600 million, vastly overwhelming those supposedly fearsome, overspending, rich, white men. That money could be given directly to that candidate (since it comes, obviously, nowhere near the limit).

Instead of complaining about 158 families spending $176 million (which strikes me as a fairly paltry amount, especially since only $2,700 can be given to a candidate), the clamor should be about the need for everyone to give just a little money to someone. Skip one cup of coffee, one cheeseburger, one movie, and give the money to the candidate you like best. It could be so easy.

And yet bitching about those terrible rich people — those terrible male white people — serves other political interests... interests that the rich white males who own The New York Times have a constitutional right to push with all the powerful rhetoric and lovely graphics they can muster.

ADDED: Why did the NYT draw the line at 158 families? Why not analyze the top 150 families or the top 200? I can't help feeling that the Times drew the line where it would make the other facts seem most dramatic. We're told they contributed "nearly half of the early money." Why not draw the line at exactly half? If we included the next 10% or 20% or 30% of the early money, how many families would we see and how different would the conclusions have to be?

UPDATE: Power Line links to this post and says:

The rich people who own the New York Times, and the reporters and editors who work for them, are very clear about their own First Amendment right to devote corporate assets to weighing in on the issues of the day, but they are eager to deprive everyone else of the same right, especially those who don’t agree with their far-left perspective....

What the New York Times really objects to is diversity. The only way to get free speech nowadays–diverse free speech, anyway–is to pay for it. Thank God there are a handful of people with the means and the will to do so.

And Jaltcoh, at Facebook, quotes my statement — "if we're talking about families — 158 families — how are they 'overwhelmingly... male'?" — and somebody suggests: "Single-person households that only contain men?" That makes me say:

If that's what it is, then I object to the use of the word "families." Has the NYT picked up the sentimentality of politicians, who continually talk about "families," as if single people didn't exist? The word "households" appears in the article, and I think anyone talking about demographics needs to notice the difference between "families" and "households" and be more careful.

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."

A "loophole" that lets candidates — like Carly Fiorina — get away with "coordinating" with Super Pacs.

The NYT seems to be sounding an alert over something completely bland and banal:

The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of a small number of billionaires. But in 2016, the groups are aggressively exploiting gray areas and loopholes in the rules, few of which the commission – deadlocked with its three Republican and three Democratic members – has hastened to close.

Oh, those terrible deadlocks. Now, what is this loophole that the Commission is allowing to exist?

Candidates and super PACs are free to coordinate their plans if the information is shared in public view.... posting video on YouTube, and... signal[ing] a preference for positive advertising [on] Twitter...

Mrs. Fiorina and other candidates... have taken it a step further: making available advance travel schedules.... Under the rules, Mrs. Fiorina’s super PAC... could not even call her campaign staff members to see where and when she is headed next. But Mrs. Fiorina has cleverly sidestepped that prohibition: Her campaign has created a public Google calendar, which it updates weeks into the future, showing the events she has planned.

Putting video on YouTube, tweeting about the kind of message you want to get out, and having an on-line calendar of upcoming events... that counts as "clever"? I guess "cleverly" bolsters the characterization of the permissibility of this speech as a "loophole" in the campaign finance law. But it's simple, obvious free speech from the candidate. I don't see how the Commission could change this or why we should feel that it should change.

The Times has a quote from campaign finance lawyer: “Essentially, it inoculates a case of coordination by making it public.” Like there's a real disease here. Inoculates.