The mid-May gathering at a restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood was billed as a congressional fundraiser, but with rapper MC Hammer and a Grateful Dead lyricist mingling in the crowd, the room buzzed more like it was a product launch. Except this product wasn't designed for consumers, at least not directly. It was meant to disrupt American politics.
Sean Parker, the 33-year-old former Facebook president who is worth about $2 billion, stood before dozens of donors to lay out the idea. "We feel for a long time Silicon Valley hasn't been properly represented at a federal level," he explained...