I will vote for Obama tomorrow.

Warning: Upcoming exercise in rambling self-justification that tells you almost nothing you don't already know, and comes far too late to make any difference to anyone.

I was going to vote for John Edwards.

Early in the campaign, Edwards was the only one of the three major candidates who seemed to fundamentally understand that you cannot defeat toxic Republican policies except by opposing them forcefully and with conviction. You cannot defeat them by offering the public watered-down versions of Republican policies; you cannot defeat them by offering the public the sheer force of your charisma; you can only defeat them by fighting them until you win: by convincing the public that your opponents are wrong.

Edwards was also the only candidate who, I believed, was motivated by genuine outrage about the suffering of poor people in America. I'm not poor — in fact, I'm so socially insulated from poverty that nobody I know is genuinely poor (note that I don't count grad students who could get decent jobs if they chose) — but I know that the default setting of politics is to serve the well-to-do, and any counterweight in the other direction seemed like a welcome change.

But Edwards dropped out of the race last week. So I had a choice.

I had been strongly leaning one way for a long time; the direction will surprise nobody who knows me. Recently, however, I was almost dissuaded by Obama's very real badness on health care reform — consult Krugman and Ezra Klein for details.

But ultimately, for me, the candidates' differences in individual policy positions are overwhelmed by structural differences in their relationships to political power. Clinton is far more in thrall to existing power structures in Washington, both financial and rhetorical. Clinton not only understands how Washington works, as she boasts; on some basic level, she agrees with its basic premises. And therefore, in the year 2008, electing President Hillary Clinton would be a vast improvement over the status quo, but also a disappointment.

Last Thursday, I ducked out of work to see Lawrence Lessig speak at Stanford. The talk was billed as his final speech on Free Culture, but he spent the last quarter hour speaking about his new focus: the corrupting influence of money on politics, via lobbyists, PACs, etc. When policy chases the median dollar instead of the median human life, human happiness is not the optimized variable. To make public policy work for human beings, therefore, one must actively fight against money's influence.

Lessig argued, furthermore, that unless a significant bloc of voters makes this issue non-negotiable — he said it must be a "litmus test" — then change will never occur. (Note that he carefully avoided stating the converse proposition that change will occur if voters do make it a litmus test. Lessig is an idealist, but he is not an optimist.)

Clinton's campaign has been, to a large degree, powered by the influx of lobbyist and PAC money. No surprise, therefore, that Lessig endorsed Obama early; he has a new video up tonight reiterating his support (in his widely-imitated and wildly effective slideshow style, about which more later).

Anyway, I'm no more optimistic than Lessig about the possibility of pruning the influence of money from politics, but it seems like it's worth a shot. We'll never weed the money out completely, but Lessig made it seem tantalizingly possible that we could dramatically reduce its influence in the foreseeable future.

Lessig alone didn't sway my vote, but I walked out of that lecture confirmed in my conviction that the structural differences between Obama's campaign and Clinton's were reason enough to overcome my feelings about particular issues, even those as important as health care.

With luck, therefore, for once in who knows how many election cycles, California will play a meaningful role in choosing the next President of the United States. And with luck, it will be Obama.

p.s. Incidentally, one of the most interesting moments in Lessig's talk came afterwards, when someone asked him about running for Congress — a question perhaps prompted by rumors floating around the Bay Area. Lessig's answer (approx.): "This was supposed to be the last Free Culture talk, not the first running for Congress talk." I don't hear a denial there. Note also that Lessig's famed slideshow style has evolved from the grunge P22 Typewriter-on-black he used in the Free Culture days, to a more refined serif font on a slate-gray background, which looks (to my eye) more "Washingtonian" somehow.

Hillary Clinton betrays the First Amendment and wastes the government's time with video game sales bill

Tonight, Politech brings me news that Sen. Hillary Clinton is, with Sen. Lieberman's help, introducing the "Family Entertainment Protection Act", which will impose fines on retailers that sell "M-rated" video games to minors.

Stuff like this is a perfect example of why I will never feel excited about Sen. Clinton as a politician. This bill's wrong for all sorts of reasons. First, and most obviously, it infringes on people's First Amendment rights, or at least skirts perilously close (because it subjects video games to legal restrictions that don't exist for any other expressive medium, and are therefore not content-neutral). Second, the problems it addresses can be also solved by technological measures, like parental control interfaces on game consoles, which the industry's already implementing. Third, the law will waste the resources of Federal law enforcement agencies, which have plenty of real crimes like fraud and terrorism to deal with. Fourth, even if enforced, the law will probably do little to reduce the incidence of children playing violent video games.¹ Fifth, it's ridiculous to have a Federal law about this when local community standards about acceptable game use may vary widely. Sixth, it's ridiculous to suppose that sixteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds need to be "protected" in the same way.

Finally, even if none of the above were true, the bill would still be a waste of time and energy. There are about ten thousand more important issues that Clinton could be acting upon, and it's a sign of her extraordinarily misplaced priorities that she's choosing to insert herself into the news cycle with this one.

But none of this matters to Sen. Clinton. Sen. Clinton thinks she can buy off "values" voters by offering up this bill, and so the bill gets offered. The Lieberman co-sponsorship is telling, because I think it reveals the proper way to think about Clinton: she's basically a slightly more mediagenic version of Holy Joe. Whenever the going gets tough --- and even when times aren't tough, but she just wants some attention --- Clinton will instinctively tack rightward on culture issues and national security issues², because she fundamentally believes that's how Democrats win elections. If Clinton has failed, thus far, to equivocate on Intelligent Design, it's only because she doesn't think it's a big enough vote-earner.³

And the kicker's that this particular element of the ploy, at least, probably won't even work. Are suburban parents really going to vote for Clinton because she came out against violent video games? If so, then I weep for our nation.

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1. When I was a kid, I didn't have the cash to buy video games on my own. My parents bought them for me. Even if I got a game through other means, like borrowing from a friend, it was never a big secret what my siblings and I were playing: the cases were lying around on the floor, and the gameplay was right up there on the television screen, for anyone in the den to see. The problem (to the extent that any problem exists) is not that stores are selling mature games to little kids. The problem's that parents aren't paying attention to the games that they buy for their kids, and that they permit to be played on the family television. Legal penalties for selling to kids are just a non sequitur.

2. Speaking of national security, let us also contemplate the irony of Clinton's bill in light of her consistent support for, you know, actually real violence on a massive scale, in the form of the Iraq war.

3. Incidentally, McCain has already made the opposite calculation w.r.t. Intelligent Design. Why this man gets credit for having greater integrity than, say, Rick Santorum is a freaking mystery to me. I hypothesize it has something to do with the fact that Santorum's obviously a bigot, which is an unforgivable media sin, whereas McCain's merely incredibly bad on civil liberties, women's rights, and labor rights, which all fly right under the radar for well-fed pundits. Don't get me wrong --- as long as the Republicans remain a band of plutocrats, theocrats, and criminals, McCain's a useful guy to have around in the Senate. But I've got no particular affection for him, and I certainly don't want him to be President.