Andrew Yang to launch a third party

I registered as a Democrat to vote for Andrew in the CA primary. I find his view of the state of the USA is much more current and much less clouded by the twisted incentives that drive so many career politicians. He has positions on just about every topic and explains the rationale behind them.<p>It makes me wonder what the narrative against him would be. In the 2020 primaries and election, he wasn&#x27;t taken seriously by either dems or reps, as if they felt that doing so would confer credibility. He was quashed in the debates in lieu of ratings, and sometimes did quite well.<p>I suppose the question ultimately will be whether his party pull more votes from Democrats or Republicans, rather than whether they&#x27;d win any major elections. As a younger entrant, he should be able to speak to younger voters and perhaps over time, grow a meaningful base. He did admirably in 2020 and I am confident he can build.

Yang has never been my top choice, but I think he&#x27;s generally a good dude. However a third party could be disastrous for the democrats, who can only just barely win elections due to the current structure of the electorate. Hopefully he will be more strategic than that, however. A third party could be really beneficial in some areas where democrats dominate everything.

Seems like you&#x27;d have better luck trying to capture the GOP than start another party. There is a large population of Republican voters that is not really &quot;conservative&quot;, but just anti-Democrat. Someone who captured this base while remaining appealing to some moderates&#x2F;independents would do quite well.

I like Yang. So much of politics feels like figuring out who to blame for all our problems - is it corporations &#x2F; immigrants &#x2F; the rich &#x2F; the poor &#x2F; other countries &#x2F; the government etc.<p>Yang&#x27;s message about blaming automation &#x2F; technology might be still be wrong, or at least overly simplified. But it&#x27;s at least laying the groundwork for taking a problem-solving approach instead of a fight to the death, since it suggests we should take a look at the economic forces that shape the job market instead of trying to punish whichever group is the bad one.<p>Obviously there&#x27;s tactical issues trying to run as a third party candidate in the US. But Yang certainly is aware of that already, so he must have some angle. Maybe as another comment suggested his party could field candidates for local races that have ranked-choice voting (which includes mayoral races for major cities like NYC).<p>Or he could even participate in the debates and get his message out, but keeping an eye on his poll numbers, so that he could withdraw before the election if it looks like he&#x27;s just going to spoil the race towards the candidate most-opposite his beliefs.

Yang is not dumb so I have to think there is something more to this than some sort of quixotic attempt at an actual 3rd party. Much better and richer politicians than him have tried that and failed badly.

OK, that’s nice.<p>How do you get on the ballot in every single state for the Presidency?<p>Are you going to run competitive House and Senate races in every single state?<p>What’s your plan of action for getting the debate committees to allow a third-party into the debates if polling isn’t good enough?

Didn&#x27;t he get absolutely stomped in his last two runs?

Whatever Yang does, it will be sensational and attention-getting, regardless of the outcome.

In related news, I will be launching my own version of the NBA, where I am excited to be the starting point guard for the #1 ranked team.

Andrew Yang was smart and self-aware enough of his own political goals and the electoral reality of RCV to endorse Kathryn Garcia near the end of the NYC mayoral primary. I respected that.<p>In FPTP the spoiler effect is not just a bogeyman that the two dominant parties trot out to scare you into voting for them, it&#x27;s a well-understood mathematical inevitability. Perot led to Clinton. Nader led to Bush II.<p>Any third party in America that reaches the brink of national prominence will be (and has been) counterproductive to its own professed aims. I think what is most relevant to Yang is that this is extremely understood in the hyperpartisan modern environment. See the conservative glee and support for Kanye West&#x27;s 2020 campaign, and the liberal celebration at rumors that Donald Trump was starting a new political party.<p>Being extremely selective about where to run candidates and focusing on a handful of &quot;non-partisan&quot; issues (good luck) would help a lot. However, Yang&#x27;s first hurdle will be be swimming upstream against potential allies who will not want to give &quot;the other side&quot; a win. I honestly don&#x27;t think anyone can win that fight right now.

Wouldn’t this be a fourth party? Edit: ah, “third party” is an expression in American politics. Learning something new every day.

Andrew Yang has a book to sell

Ranked-choice voting could be make the most meaningfully positive impact on US democracy in decades. Regardless of your politics.<p>More messaging, coverage, and support for ranked-choice voting is necessary, and we should all hope to see more of it in coming months&#x2F;years.

Yang is underestimating the network effect of the two parties.<p>I thought running for mayor of NY City was kind of odd. His lack of experience really showed after his initial name ID advantage faded away.<p>I feel like he is fighting for relevancy but it&#x27;s approaching it from a wrong angle.<p>I do understand he is feeling betrayed a bit by the party. He was probably promised (or hinted at) some kind of a position with the Biden admin.<p>Then he had that disastrous loss as a mayor. I&#x27;m not sure starting a third party is really a right move for him.<p>He is interesting (<i>was</i> authentic) as a candidate, but quite honesty doesn&#x27;t have a real national name ID or charisma to pull together a successful third party.<p>At this point, the only person who can reasonably start a third party is probably Donald Trump (not saying he is going to). My point is you need a huge national popular backing.<p>Yang doesn&#x27;t have that. If anything he is going to destroy the possibility of having a real competitive third party in our country.<p>So, yeah another misstep (IMHO) by Yang.

I really dislike Yang&#x27;s signature UBI push for a number of reasons, but it&#x27;s hard to deny that he&#x27;s a good reasonably smart guy who just wants go do good things.

A Gallup poll from August found that 29% of Americans identified as Democrats, 28% identified as Republican, and 40% as Independent. [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;15370&#x2F;party-affiliation.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;15370&#x2F;party-affiliation.aspx</a>]<p>So, more people consider themselves independent than members of either party.<p>If Andrew Yang can create the &quot;Independent Party&quot;, perhaps they would get the most votes.

Very interesting. Apart from the UBI angle this is too political to discuss here. And until specific UBI plans are announced there isn&#x27;t much to discuss there.<p>My thoughts, in long form: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yevaud.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;open-letter-to-andrew-yang" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yevaud.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;open-letter-to-andrew-yang</a>

He should recruit Tulsi Gabbard and Bill Weld, and start something magnificent.

Here&#x27;s my hot take: as long as voting is not mandatory (with the ability to go to a poll and officially &quot;abstain&quot;) all democracies will eventually spoil. The incentive to manipulate with voter suppression is just too high. Look no further than the United States if you&#x27;re from there.<p>A third party simply accelerates this by fracturing the already abysmal electorate. However mandatory voting isn&#x27;t sufficient. The abolition of FPTP (winner takes all) is also necessary. Inequality (and not necessarily just income) is only accelerating the flaws in anything other than pure-democracy.<p>TLDR: true democracy will never exist without something like mandatory score&#x2F;range&#x2F;star&#x2F;etc voting. yeah I know the USA isn&#x27;t a pure democracy. perhaps that&#x27;s the issue.

Ladies and gentlemen, another example of how Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.<p>Diluting your own party vote is just going to work out swimmingly for you.

For a guy who has never amounted to a hill of shit politically, he sure does seem to have deep pockets to keep trying to split the Democratic vote.

Joining the ranks of all the other well-known and historically important politicians who started a 3rd party in the US.

Another cult of personality instead of building a lasting movement built on any principle. This will fail.

I’m desperately interested but highly skeptical. A genuine center party would help, but there are many structural reasons why it’s not likely, and those would have to be addressed. There’s a great book about this titled “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop.” I highly recommend it.

I&#x27;ve always wondered why the U.S. never had a decently-sized Pirate Party as a third party, unlike many European countries. A tech-focused, liberalish with some libertarian ideas, some outright radical ideas, would very much fit Yang&#x27;s political aesthetics.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pirate_Party" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pirate_Party</a>

As soon as this becomes serious, &quot;someone&quot; is going to hire a botnet to spam Andrew Yang&#x27;s 3rd party&#x27;s hashtag on twitter and then his 3rd party will get banned. A similar thing will happen on facebook and Youtube. Without social media, there&#x27;s no way for a 3rd party get truly get off the ground and influence an election. Even if you create new accounts, why should the average person trust a political party that has to constantly create new social media accounts.<p>None of the left leaning media will cover this and yang will be forced to air his concerns on Fox news which will immediately discredit him in the eyes of everyone who only trusts the left-leaning media.<p>And that&#x27;s the end of Andrew Yang&#x27;s 3rd party.<p>Whether you agree with Unity2020 or the people behind it (especially now with all the vaccine chaos) the way it got shut down was stunning to me. Even if they were actually behind some of the suspicious traffic, it just seems like such a game-able system if you have the money to spend to disrupt it.

3rd, that would be the Green Party, no? There is also Libertarian, Democratic Socialists, Socialist, and a handful of loca parties that only show up in ballots during election season.<p>I wonder if this will be a true leftist party or simply another milquetoast Democrat-light party.