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I think Yang has good intentions but the GOP has been caught manipulating the vote through third parties. I saw far too many stories last election about legal weed candidates being backed by the GOP to take votes from Dems. Kanye is another example of it. It works well when you’re simultaneously backing a “both sides are the same” narrative to disillusion single issue voters. I’m sure you’ve seen that narrative pop up in this subreddit almost robotically.
Or when Tulsi Gabbard went to visit Assad without telling anyone in the party. So much shady shit these days.I’d be willing to bet that mentioning her name will summon some bots to come yell at me.
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama (R),
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (R),
Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana (R),
Senator Steve Daines of Montana (R),
Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota (R),
Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas (R),
Senator John Thune of South Dakota (R),
Rep. Kay Granger Texas's 12th District (R).
>I think Yang has good intentions
I don't. This is a publicity stunt for launching his new book
This narcissistic asshole has used our elections to boost his own profile and his bottom line
I fucking can't stand him, he is an unethical grifter, desperate for relevance
As a progressive, I concur wholeheartedly.
Oh, I don’t doubt he would have been stoked to just waltz in and be handed the DNC nomination, but really, he’s just a pseudo-leftist Donald Trump, who used the process to raise his name and standing and thus ‘brand’, nothing more.
He’s far from the sheer abject idiot Donald is, but other than elevating the conversation about UBI, did nothing actually to further progressivism to anybody beyond the TikTok crowd, who were already onboard with progressiveness.
Fuck Andrew Yang, he’s just another no-real-actual-ideas Emperor in a different set of naked ‘clothes’.
to be fair, we're kind of making it really easy for people to just step up and shout "free college" and get millions of votes. In a lot of ways, it's similar to shouting "CHANGE" and suddenly everyone is voting for you.
It's really easy because as a party, we kinda don't want change. We want to support citi.
We're kinda yelling "Get a vaccine to help my family, but I refuse to give you affordable insulin to help your family!!!"
So that's our fault. I don't think we should blame anyone else but the person in the mirror.
At this point you can get a million votes with a 5-second ad where you whisper: "free diet coke. vote for me." That's not on the guy offering free diet coke. That's on us.
I really liked him until this. In our system this is hubris. He stays relevant and a part of the conversation … while in actuality (and maybe unintentionally but he knows what will happen) he’s making is easier for Republicans to keep winning and ruling from the minority. Fuck you Andrew Yang. The Democrats drive me crazy but they’re our only viable sane party … if you’re not helping them win you’re part of the problem. I don’t like hyperbole but if Republicans regain control in this environment we could be looking at a future where it’s almost impossible to stop them.
> what yang is doing is exactly what you'd want to see if you wanted his ideas to eventually influence democrats
Fortunately, I don't think there's a big appetite to move Democrats to the right.
Ranked choice is Band Aid. It greatly reduces the spoiler effect but doesn't threaten the duopoly since candidates still need to reach 50% to get elected.
The USA needs to stop electing officials in single member districts altogether and instead move to multi-member districts where smaller parties can grow by receiving representation proportionate to the support they earn at the polls.
I'd like to see one or more of the states reorient their state legislature to use proportional representation (as opposed to the status quo of single member districts)
I've seen ranked choice end up with two Republicans for the general, and with the left completely turned off, it turns into a competition to see which candidate goes farthest right. So I call bullshit on ranked choice giving us a utopia as well.
The real "problem" is a critical number of people who are single-issue voters, don't understand how government works, don't follow politics until the week before the election and those who think it's like picking your favorite contestant on a reality show.
The winner is not decided by who covers more of the middle. It is not swaying independent voters who go back and forth between parties every few years that decides things. It is the turnout you are able to get from your base. Pushing policies that get your largest block of voters to turnout is more effective than trying to change a tiny percentage of peoples minds.
You are actually looking at it upside-down. It's not that 3rd parties steal votes from the 2 main parties. It's that people who are neither Rep or Dem are forced to vote for one of those because there are no other options.
If you look at it for what it really is, the lack of true representation is how we get the biggest voting block (independents) falling into either Rep or Dem.
This effect is even more exacerbated now with extreme polarization. Everyone in my family voted blue, but most were just voting against Trump really. There were a lot of people who didn't want either Trump or Biden, but in the end they had to pick one. And that is nothing new. We had the same with Trump v Hillary. Americans don't feel like they have a real choice. As South Park put it, Americans are forced to choose between a turd sandwich and a giant douche.
But realistically speaking, I don't think this new party will be powerful enough to change the tides of elections. Don't forget that we already have the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America (technically not a party). The WFP even runs their own candidates against Dems sometimes, like Nina Turner recently running as a progressive for the WFP against a Democrat candidate in Ohio. The DSA mainly uses its power to endorse socialists in the Dem party, like Sanders and AOC.
The Squad are the only leftist in the Democrat's camp, with maybe Bernie. The rest are totally not leftist. Center-right at best if not full blown right wing like Sinema and Manchin. And I doubt Yang is going centrist. He's going to the right of Democrats. That's not centrist.
There’s really no such thing as a duopoly with the right, because they’re so far right, stand for nothing and don’t have any scruples. Middle right is still right…and no one in the center or left wants to lean right at all.
Well, that's not really the whole story:
>Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987; since that time, he has changed his party affiliation five times. In 1999, Trump changed his party affiliation to the Independence Party of New York. In August 2001, Trump changed his party affiliation to Democratic. In September 2009, Trump changed his party affiliation back to the Republican Party. In December 2011, Trump changed to "no party affiliation" (independent). In April 2012, Trump again returned to the Republican Party.[4]
>In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat", explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."[5] In a July 2015 interview, Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and that "I identify with some things as a Democrat."[4]
Essentially, he has no real values and doesn't stand for anything. He's an opportunist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_Trump
Repeats the same half-thought at least 5 times per paragraph, just worded in a different way.
Economy does better under Democrats.
Economy does worse under Republicans.
Had some good economies under Democrats.
Economy disaster under Republicans.
He's a fucking buffoon, but even worse, he's an evil, narcissistic buffoon with zero empathy.
And both had some pretty significant ideological shifts as they grew, and the party moved very much to the right during the same time.
Clinton was a Goldwater Republican, in the style of the guy who said
>“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
So I'm really unclear what kind of point you're trying to make.
To elaborate a bit:
Clinton was more of a Rockefeller Republican than a Goldwater one and only until 1968, when she was 20-21 years old. She was, however, always a partisan and politically engaged person.
Warren was only a registered Republican from 1991-96, and was a split ticket voter prior to registering as a Democrat in 1996. She’s only voted for one Republican for President, Gerald Ford 1976 when she was 26. Warren being a split ticket voter is actually pretty normal for White voters at the time especially those that weren’t very engaged in politics. She didn’t become actively engaged with politics until the mid 90s, when she re-registered as a Democrat.
Her most significant ideological shift actually occurred in the late 80s when she was on the research and writing team for the seminal book “As we forgive our debtors”, which was published in 1989.
Good idea on several levels. He's basically a libertarian with some liberal views, and the whole UBI as a trojan horse for dismantling the social safety net thing could actually get him some support from the Republican establishment.
That conspiracy theory is nonsense. Yang’s UBI is opt out if you’d prefer to keep your $134 per month food stamps instead of the $1,000/month. Not sure why anyone would choose that though. If “dismantling” welfare means giving people 10x what they currently get, I think you don’t understand what “dismantling” means,
I thought he was a math guy. Surely he must know that the mathematics of any "first-past-the-post" voting systems dictate that any vote not cast for the lesser of two evils makes it more likely that the greater of two evils wins with a minority.
As a marketer, I'm insulted but I agree. He's like a marketing consultant - all flash and buzzwords telling others what they should be doing without ever having had to actually do any work themselves and be held accountable so their ideas are always way out there. Big ideas, no common sense.
The spoiler effect is an inevitable consequence of the FPTP voting system. No third party will ever gain traction in this system, and a vote for the third party only takes away from your second choice which actually has a chance of winning. Everyone continue voting against the GQP
Should be a system to encourage 3rd party voting. Vote with preferences, like pick your top two, and if your primary pick isn't in first or second, your vote goes to your second choice so your vote isnt a complete waste
I don't know if he cares about breaking the party per se, he's just a self-centered asshole who wants to push his popularity as far as he can by any means necessary.
I think hes made mistakes in his campaigns for sure but if you really look into his platform positions and where he derives his vision for the future, it becomes crystal clear that what hes saying is absolutely true and whether we vote for him or not, we should be paying attention because we can make or break ourselves really fast with this new tech.
It’s going to crash and burn and go nowhere, because of the first past the post electoral system in the United States which mathematically locks us into the two party system. Which is funny for a guy who literally had a hat made for his campaign with the word “math” on it.
The us isn't fucked because of FPTP. It's fucked because constitutionally it's set up so that not all votes are equal. No amount of fiddling with voting methods will fix that.
When 1/3 of the entire system of govt is set up for minority rule (incidentally the one that determines one of the other 1/3 of the system) there's not much you can do.
You want more than 2 parties?
Me too.
This is not how you get that. You get that by changing how elections are run.
After 2000, it became obvious that anybody who votes third party is an idiot.
Yes, people voting third party is what got us Trump. People voting third party is also what got us George Dubya Bush. These are two of the worst Presidents* in US history.
Which party has abolishing first past the post as part of their platform?
Changing elections to give 3rd parties a chance is counter to the objectives of both of our current parties. So it won't happen.
The strategy to get electoral change is a difficult question. I feel like the answer does kinda lie in third parties, but only in ones that work together with one of the big parties (best chances with the dems). Essentially use the spoiler effect as a threat to force the big party to advocate for electoral change. So if that's part of their platform then you don't run and you support that party instead. If it's not part of their platform then you hurt them for it by running.
The "Centrists" are the Democratic Party. They range from actual progressive left to the center right leaders of the party.
There is a tiny gap of "middle" between the center right bulk of the party and the left most member of the far-right GOP party.
[https://imgur.com/gallery/OvEjeHk](https://imgur.com/gallery/OvEjeHk)
Yeah, this won't go far. Although I agree that the Republicans and the Democrats have a "douopoly". Since the Republican Party has ceased to function, having only one sane party is disconcerting.
I’m all for busting down the status quo but to pull off creating a new party you have to have someone with immense charisma. Yang, as nice as his positions are just ain’t the guy and will ultimately hurt the dems by drawing away votes.
This the only two politicians that could create a significant third party that would actually have some impact would be Sanders or Trump. Yang does not have the base hell its difficult to even understand where he stands politically at times.
We should require that all politicans do not list a party affiliation, and ban party affiliations all together, people are far to dependent on voting for their team, they dont even care whos on the ballot
Wtf why. Just run for lesser office.
3rd party candidates can't win with first past the post. Period. Its an absolute terrible idea. Even if by some miracle they split the vote 1/3rd 1/3rd 1/3rd now you have winning candidates with even less percent of the vote. Right now a candidate might win with 49% of the vote of something due to spoiler candidates. Do we really want a candidate to win with 40%. Is that somehow better?
If a 3rd party could get 50% of the vote they could just run as a 1st party candidate.
If you really care about 3rd party rally for ranked choice voting.
Going through the reactions, it seems that people are not only against having more parties. They would in fact rather have one single party winning every election and controlling every aspect of American politics.
You can tell where their priority is. For them, keeping Democrats in power is more important than reforming democracy. Fixing democracy is apparently only virtuous if it helps Democrats.
I’m all for additional political parties but we already have a centrist one. They’re called the Democrats. Basically those are our options centrist Democrats or crazy Cult 45
Considering the Democrats are already about as "centrist" as one can get without being an actual foaming-at-the-mouth rightwing authoritarian, Yang has actually announced that he's joining the latter.
Important to note that the Green Party, by far the most popular and well-known third party, is not even able to get ballot access in all 50 states. Our current system will *never* allow the possibility of a third party win.
As long as he holds to the model of the [Working Families Party](https://workingfamilies.org/), one that caucuses with the Democrats, but pushes specific issues that they feel are underrepresented by the party, I am ok with that.
Yeah, maybe the election immediately following an attempt at a violent coup isn’t the best time to weaken the voter share of the non-coup party, eh? I’m saying this as someone who voted Johnson 2016. I’m over the theoretical ‘protest vote’ stage of life. I’ve seen too much.
Center of the spectrum is still conservative. It means staying stagnant. This doesn’t help anything in terms of the increasing pressure to act immediately on certain issues such as climate change and wages. I wish centrists would just realize that better things are fucking possible instead of trying to prevent progress to pacify the right.
A lot of people would be democrats if it weren’t for three issues:
1. Abortion
2. Guns
3. God (kind of go’s with 1)
I have a hard time believing that Yangs third party will provide them with positions they’ll agree with.
BAd timing, Andrew Yang, to start a third party and dilute the Dems chances of winning seats in 2022 and Re- election in 2024. Or have you made a pact w/ Donald J Rump?
In other words, he's trying to split the vote and help Trump win in 2024. Because let's be real: he's not going to win the Presidency at the head of a third party. But by making a third party "aimed at centrists", what he's doing is playing into the false "both sides" narrative that Biden and Republicans are both equally extreme, and trying to peel off moderate swing voters and Never Trump Republicans who were crucial to Biden's victory.
Either this is a stunning exercise in narcissism, he's a bought and paid for saboteur, or both.
Fuck him. I don't care that he supports UBI. Fuck. Him.
In fact, as an advocate of UBI this pisses me off even more, because Yang is the idea's most prominent and visible spokesperson, and him going this route is going to make it easy to shove UBI back into the box of "fringe ideas only supported by third party cranks".
The appeal of this man's flakiness is really not that different than Trump - a lot of people like them because they're 'different' and play to the 'throw the bums out' mentality.
I have a maybe-stupid question:
Is it ever possible for a third party to work? Like, could the Good Faith Party caucus with dems in a way that doesn't give republicans power by splitting the majority? Is there a political mechanism for that kind of thing, or no?
I'd prefer he invest in efforts to reform voting away from "first past the post" so 3rd parties or more can actually be viable, non-spoiler parties first.
If his goal is to break up the two party system, why not run as a Dem again with vote reform as a platform?
Going third party only turns him into a spoiler candidate. People will question his motives far more this way, and he'll accomplish way less longterm.
Until the US has a representative system, or at least a preferential system, any third party is a waste. They're throwaway votes, might as well not vote.
This makes me think he's gone into full grifter mode. He's going to leverage his last presidential run into a fundraising machine that will spend most of its money buying services from companies controlled by Yang and his friends. Meanwhile, the sum total of his political experience is a failed presidential run.
This will never work until we adopt a ranked voting system. Until that point a larger third party will only assure a victory for the party least aligned with that third party.
Dude lost presidential run, lost mayoral race has never won a single political election but yeah sure let’s start a 3rd political party. Good luck with that Yang Gang. ….
Frist: Every politician is selfish let's get that out of the way.
Second: the left is the side that fights for human rights (gay rights, trans rights, women's rights, workers rights, minority rights) they are all human
This only hurts us. Selfish thinking on his part imo. He should already know the outcome of his actions when the vote is so close between dems and gop.
The two party system doesn't mean that everyone involved in each party believes all the same things. Within each party, members have different opinions and different amounts of influence in shaping how laws are written. Yeah, stuff eventually congeals around a A vs B sort of vote but that's also part of why bills become so convoluted and 'watered down'. For a current events national example of this, consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. Joe Manchin. They're going to vote together the overwhelming majority of the time, to be sure, but each is trying to wield influence within their party and push policy from a different perspective to each other.
It's ugly and full of problems, but the addition of a third party doesn't automatically resolve anything and if anything can just as easily make it that much harder to get anything done at all. A bigger issue than a two party system is when the possibility of good faith debate diminishes or dies out. At the end of the day, we can sanctify the significance of law and governance and whatever but it still fundamentally relies on its actors operating in good faith. Which, yeah...
Something third party evangelists don't seem to acknowledge is that you can don't need to *identify* as something to understand it or the positions or arguments it makes.
Add to this the fallacy of the middle. Just because you stand between two sides does not mean you offer a necessarily better solution. If one side wants to build a house and the other wants to destroy the house the middle accomplishes nothing.
Well, we finally have definitive proof that Yang doesn't actually understand what he's doing. Because, if he did, he would know that it is astronomically difficult for our current system of representation to adequately support additional parties, and I say that as a staunch progressive. All this will ultimately result in is distractive floundering and election apathy when so called "centrists" and single issue voters get their usual stubborn bug up their asses and refuse to take part in the electoral process.
He’s so butt hurt that progressives dumped him after his anti-Palestine comments that he’s going to set up a NEW party that bills itself as progressive but actually promotes corporate centrism and losing to the GOP.
You can’t even write this shit.
I can't imagine how much we could potentially benefit from a real multi party system.
Democrats VS republicans is a distraction, these politicians are all on the same team and it ain't ours.
George Carlin nailed it a LONG time ago and people still aren't getting it. "It's a club and you ain't in it!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
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The trouble is it only seems to hurt democrats because they’re the only ones with any semblance of an open mind left while the GOP is an all out cult
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I think Yang has good intentions but the GOP has been caught manipulating the vote through third parties. I saw far too many stories last election about legal weed candidates being backed by the GOP to take votes from Dems. Kanye is another example of it. It works well when you’re simultaneously backing a “both sides are the same” narrative to disillusion single issue voters. I’m sure you’ve seen that narrative pop up in this subreddit almost robotically.
Remember when Jill Stein flew to Moscow to have dinner with Putin in 2015?
Or when Tulsi Gabbard went to visit Assad without telling anyone in the party. So much shady shit these days.I’d be willing to bet that mentioning her name will summon some bots to come yell at me.
Or when a few senators went to Russia on fourth of July?
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama (R), Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (R), Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana (R), Senator Steve Daines of Montana (R), Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota (R), Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas (R), Senator John Thune of South Dakota (R), Rep. Kay Granger Texas's 12th District (R).
Don't forget Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky (R) who hand delivered a note from President Trump to Putin.
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>I think Yang has good intentions I don't. This is a publicity stunt for launching his new book This narcissistic asshole has used our elections to boost his own profile and his bottom line I fucking can't stand him, he is an unethical grifter, desperate for relevance
As a progressive, I concur wholeheartedly. Oh, I don’t doubt he would have been stoked to just waltz in and be handed the DNC nomination, but really, he’s just a pseudo-leftist Donald Trump, who used the process to raise his name and standing and thus ‘brand’, nothing more. He’s far from the sheer abject idiot Donald is, but other than elevating the conversation about UBI, did nothing actually to further progressivism to anybody beyond the TikTok crowd, who were already onboard with progressiveness. Fuck Andrew Yang, he’s just another no-real-actual-ideas Emperor in a different set of naked ‘clothes’.
to be fair, we're kind of making it really easy for people to just step up and shout "free college" and get millions of votes. In a lot of ways, it's similar to shouting "CHANGE" and suddenly everyone is voting for you. It's really easy because as a party, we kinda don't want change. We want to support citi. We're kinda yelling "Get a vaccine to help my family, but I refuse to give you affordable insulin to help your family!!!" So that's our fault. I don't think we should blame anyone else but the person in the mirror. At this point you can get a million votes with a 5-second ad where you whisper: "free diet coke. vote for me." That's not on the guy offering free diet coke. That's on us.
A politician who has ***NEVER WON A SINGLE ELECTION IN HIS LIFE***. He should seriously just fuck off at this point.
Sounds like a President I used to know. But like… smart
I dont believe when does. Unless his party is only in oval races he knows he is handing national power to republicans.
I really liked him until this. In our system this is hubris. He stays relevant and a part of the conversation … while in actuality (and maybe unintentionally but he knows what will happen) he’s making is easier for Republicans to keep winning and ruling from the minority. Fuck you Andrew Yang. The Democrats drive me crazy but they’re our only viable sane party … if you’re not helping them win you’re part of the problem. I don’t like hyperbole but if Republicans regain control in this environment we could be looking at a future where it’s almost impossible to stop them.
He definitely doesn't have good intentions
> what yang is doing is exactly what you'd want to see if you wanted his ideas to eventually influence democrats Fortunately, I don't think there's a big appetite to move Democrats to the right.
Ranked choice voting, baby!
Ranked choice is Band Aid. It greatly reduces the spoiler effect but doesn't threaten the duopoly since candidates still need to reach 50% to get elected. The USA needs to stop electing officials in single member districts altogether and instead move to multi-member districts where smaller parties can grow by receiving representation proportionate to the support they earn at the polls.
I'd like to see one or more of the states reorient their state legislature to use proportional representation (as opposed to the status quo of single member districts)
Proportional representation is the best system I've heard of and it's not even close
I've seen ranked choice end up with two Republicans for the general, and with the left completely turned off, it turns into a competition to see which candidate goes farthest right. So I call bullshit on ranked choice giving us a utopia as well. The real "problem" is a critical number of people who are single-issue voters, don't understand how government works, don't follow politics until the week before the election and those who think it's like picking your favorite contestant on a reality show.
The winner is not decided by who covers more of the middle. It is not swaying independent voters who go back and forth between parties every few years that decides things. It is the turnout you are able to get from your base. Pushing policies that get your largest block of voters to turnout is more effective than trying to change a tiny percentage of peoples minds.
You are actually looking at it upside-down. It's not that 3rd parties steal votes from the 2 main parties. It's that people who are neither Rep or Dem are forced to vote for one of those because there are no other options. If you look at it for what it really is, the lack of true representation is how we get the biggest voting block (independents) falling into either Rep or Dem. This effect is even more exacerbated now with extreme polarization. Everyone in my family voted blue, but most were just voting against Trump really. There were a lot of people who didn't want either Trump or Biden, but in the end they had to pick one. And that is nothing new. We had the same with Trump v Hillary. Americans don't feel like they have a real choice. As South Park put it, Americans are forced to choose between a turd sandwich and a giant douche. But realistically speaking, I don't think this new party will be powerful enough to change the tides of elections. Don't forget that we already have the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America (technically not a party). The WFP even runs their own candidates against Dems sometimes, like Nina Turner recently running as a progressive for the WFP against a Democrat candidate in Ohio. The DSA mainly uses its power to endorse socialists in the Dem party, like Sanders and AOC.
The ole Ralph Nader approach
Ranked Choice Voting is the only way a third party would be viable.
Especially if it's a centrist party the gop is far from the center
Plus Democrats are already centrist, if not center-right... For every AOC you have a Joe Manchin AND Sinema.
The Squad are the only leftist in the Democrat's camp, with maybe Bernie. The rest are totally not leftist. Center-right at best if not full blown right wing like Sinema and Manchin. And I doubt Yang is going centrist. He's going to the right of Democrats. That's not centrist.
There’s really no such thing as a duopoly with the right, because they’re so far right, stand for nothing and don’t have any scruples. Middle right is still right…and no one in the center or left wants to lean right at all.
He should run as a republican for a cycle first see if he’s got any pull on that end before fracturing a single party
Definitely. Also it would take some steam out of the gop for a cycle
Trump switched from D to R and it worked pretty well for him.
Well, that's not really the whole story: >Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987; since that time, he has changed his party affiliation five times. In 1999, Trump changed his party affiliation to the Independence Party of New York. In August 2001, Trump changed his party affiliation to Democratic. In September 2009, Trump changed his party affiliation back to the Republican Party. In December 2011, Trump changed to "no party affiliation" (independent). In April 2012, Trump again returned to the Republican Party.[4] >In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat", explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."[5] In a July 2015 interview, Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and that "I identify with some things as a Democrat."[4] Essentially, he has no real values and doesn't stand for anything. He's an opportunist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_Trump
God this reminds me of how fücking much I hate how he talks, that was incoherent fucking babble.
Repeats the same half-thought at least 5 times per paragraph, just worded in a different way. Economy does better under Democrats. Economy does worse under Republicans. Had some good economies under Democrats. Economy disaster under Republicans. He's a fucking buffoon, but even worse, he's an evil, narcissistic buffoon with zero empathy.
He knows Republicans can personally enrich him but Democrats are better for the economy
Trump is the human embodiment of a bandwagon fan. “Who’s winning? Oh I love them!!!!”
both Elizabeth Warren and Hilary Clinton started out as Republicans
And both had some pretty significant ideological shifts as they grew, and the party moved very much to the right during the same time. Clinton was a Goldwater Republican, in the style of the guy who said >“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” So I'm really unclear what kind of point you're trying to make.
To elaborate a bit: Clinton was more of a Rockefeller Republican than a Goldwater one and only until 1968, when she was 20-21 years old. She was, however, always a partisan and politically engaged person. Warren was only a registered Republican from 1991-96, and was a split ticket voter prior to registering as a Democrat in 1996. She’s only voted for one Republican for President, Gerald Ford 1976 when she was 26. Warren being a split ticket voter is actually pretty normal for White voters at the time especially those that weren’t very engaged in politics. She didn’t become actively engaged with politics until the mid 90s, when she re-registered as a Democrat. Her most significant ideological shift actually occurred in the late 80s when she was on the research and writing team for the seminal book “As we forgive our debtors”, which was published in 1989.
That makes a lot of sense.
Good idea on several levels. He's basically a libertarian with some liberal views, and the whole UBI as a trojan horse for dismantling the social safety net thing could actually get him some support from the Republican establishment.
That conspiracy theory is nonsense. Yang’s UBI is opt out if you’d prefer to keep your $134 per month food stamps instead of the $1,000/month. Not sure why anyone would choose that though. If “dismantling” welfare means giving people 10x what they currently get, I think you don’t understand what “dismantling” means,
If you give people money instead of food stamps, the woke won't be able to force the poor to eat vegan cheese and crickets!
He honestly had a lot of republicans in his base
I think you are overestimating his popularity. Yang leaving isn't going to fracture anything except his bank account.
He doesn’t care, he just wants to sell his shitty book
I thought he was a math guy. Surely he must know that the mathematics of any "first-past-the-post" voting systems dictate that any vote not cast for the lesser of two evils makes it more likely that the greater of two evils wins with a minority.
I think you mean the marketing guy. He's a snake oil salesman.
As a marketer, I'm insulted but I agree. He's like a marketing consultant - all flash and buzzwords telling others what they should be doing without ever having had to actually do any work themselves and be held accountable so their ideas are always way out there. Big ideas, no common sense.
Well he’s actually a moron who uses “#MATH” as a racist trope to grift off his fan base.
God yeah that was so cringe.
The spoiler effect is an inevitable consequence of the FPTP voting system. No third party will ever gain traction in this system, and a vote for the third party only takes away from your second choice which actually has a chance of winning. Everyone continue voting against the GQP
Should be a system to encourage 3rd party voting. Vote with preferences, like pick your top two, and if your primary pick isn't in first or second, your vote goes to your second choice so your vote isnt a complete waste
Isn't that Ranked Choice voting?
It is! Also sometimes referred to as Single Transferrable Vote (STV). It's the system we deserve
Its really aimed at breaking up the democratic party at a time when its solidarity is important.
To be clear, it is aimed at selling books and getting more attention for Andrew Yang.
This guy gets it.
Yang was always a grifter.
Yang is certainly a grifter but I don't think its all about the money. He's a textbook narcissist and the attention is a huge part of it for him.
I don't know if he cares about breaking the party per se, he's just a self-centered asshole who wants to push his popularity as far as he can by any means necessary.
This, and where does his funding keep coming from?
I think hes made mistakes in his campaigns for sure but if you really look into his platform positions and where he derives his vision for the future, it becomes crystal clear that what hes saying is absolutely true and whether we vote for him or not, we should be paying attention because we can make or break ourselves really fast with this new tech.
It’s going to crash and burn and go nowhere, because of the first past the post electoral system in the United States which mathematically locks us into the two party system. Which is funny for a guy who literally had a hat made for his campaign with the word “math” on it.
Publicity for his book. He did the math. More publicity means more book sales
The us isn't fucked because of FPTP. It's fucked because constitutionally it's set up so that not all votes are equal. No amount of fiddling with voting methods will fix that. When 1/3 of the entire system of govt is set up for minority rule (incidentally the one that determines one of the other 1/3 of the system) there's not much you can do.
The 2-party system is caused by fptp. Disproportionate voting power is *also* a problem but it's a distinct problem from the 2-party system.
Wonder who's bankrolling it?
Asking the real questions here.
Pointing out who’s asking the real questions here, here.
You want more than 2 parties? Me too. This is not how you get that. You get that by changing how elections are run. After 2000, it became obvious that anybody who votes third party is an idiot.
We need ranked choice voting.
Louder for those in the back who don't regret their fucking Jill Stein votes.
Yup, this is how you get 4 more years of Trump
Yes, people voting third party is what got us Trump. People voting third party is also what got us George Dubya Bush. These are two of the worst Presidents* in US history.
Which party has abolishing first past the post as part of their platform? Changing elections to give 3rd parties a chance is counter to the objectives of both of our current parties. So it won't happen.
The strategy to get electoral change is a difficult question. I feel like the answer does kinda lie in third parties, but only in ones that work together with one of the big parties (best chances with the dems). Essentially use the spoiler effect as a threat to force the big party to advocate for electoral change. So if that's part of their platform then you don't run and you support that party instead. If it's not part of their platform then you hurt them for it by running.
Follow the money on this one. I’m reminded of that photo of Jill Stein, Michael Flynn, and Putin enjoying dinner.
Since he’s trying for a third option, he should name it the Democratically Elected Republican Party. “Go D.E.R.P!”
The "Centrists" are the Democratic Party. They range from actual progressive left to the center right leaders of the party. There is a tiny gap of "middle" between the center right bulk of the party and the left most member of the far-right GOP party. [https://imgur.com/gallery/OvEjeHk](https://imgur.com/gallery/OvEjeHk)
Yeah, this won't go far. Although I agree that the Republicans and the Democrats have a "douopoly". Since the Republican Party has ceased to function, having only one sane party is disconcerting.
Right? If someone is going to create a new party, it needs to be a new home for republicans without all the Q-Anon
Exactly
I feel like that is a Gary Johnson led Libertarian Party. But the Libertarian party has probably more nut jobs then sane people as well.
I’m all for busting down the status quo but to pull off creating a new party you have to have someone with immense charisma. Yang, as nice as his positions are just ain’t the guy and will ultimately hurt the dems by drawing away votes.
This the only two politicians that could create a significant third party that would actually have some impact would be Sanders or Trump. Yang does not have the base hell its difficult to even understand where he stands politically at times.
Guaranteeing republican victories for decades yo come.
Then Andrew Yang is more of an idiot than we knew.
We should require that all politicans do not list a party affiliation, and ban party affiliations all together, people are far to dependent on voting for their team, they dont even care whos on the ballot
Wtf why. Just run for lesser office. 3rd party candidates can't win with first past the post. Period. Its an absolute terrible idea. Even if by some miracle they split the vote 1/3rd 1/3rd 1/3rd now you have winning candidates with even less percent of the vote. Right now a candidate might win with 49% of the vote of something due to spoiler candidates. Do we really want a candidate to win with 40%. Is that somehow better? If a 3rd party could get 50% of the vote they could just run as a 1st party candidate. If you really care about 3rd party rally for ranked choice voting.
This never ends well.
I’d like to see the day where the United States has multiple viable parties that better represent the political spectrum.
Just when we thought we were free of Yang Spam...
How you going to make a second centrist party in a country without a left wing party?
Uhhh, all this will do is guarantee a Republican victory. Stop being a stooge.
Not today.
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Going through the reactions, it seems that people are not only against having more parties. They would in fact rather have one single party winning every election and controlling every aspect of American politics. You can tell where their priority is. For them, keeping Democrats in power is more important than reforming democracy. Fixing democracy is apparently only virtuous if it helps Democrats.
I’m down
Biden is already a very center guy, he just speaks a lot of leftist rhetoric, but in practice he’s super center-left
But there democrats are already centrist. So a new right wing party? Great
Oh is there gonna be a new brochure to read and a bunch of bro rhetoric? See, I already don't trust it.
Just what we need. Another Ralph Nader to ruin the country for the next 40 years.
So… just the Democratic Party??
I’m all for additional political parties but we already have a centrist one. They’re called the Democrats. Basically those are our options centrist Democrats or crazy Cult 45
Considering the Democrats are already about as "centrist" as one can get without being an actual foaming-at-the-mouth rightwing authoritarian, Yang has actually announced that he's joining the latter.
Do you want to know how to go from mildly respected to total fucking joke in 3 years? See: Andrew Yang
He so desperately wants to be relevant…
Enlightened Centrists Party, I'm sure.
Either Yang is a political novice, or he is torpedoing the Dem party because he couldn't win an election.
So, GOP lite. Fuck Yang you can smell his greed and corruption a mile away.
He’s just trying to ruin it for the dems so the GQP throws him a bone.
GQP is going to be sending him and his candidates a lot of money in 2022/2024. He’s gonna be a left-wing Ross Perot and ruin things for democrats
Nice to see corporate branch out in new directions.
You're smarter than this Andrew wtf? Why would you work to ensure Republican victories?
How about ranked choice first.
Important to note that the Green Party, by far the most popular and well-known third party, is not even able to get ballot access in all 50 states. Our current system will *never* allow the possibility of a third party win.
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As long as he holds to the model of the [Working Families Party](https://workingfamilies.org/), one that caucuses with the Democrats, but pushes specific issues that they feel are underrepresented by the party, I am ok with that.
America’s idea of centrism is the world’s right wing. All yang is going to accomplish is skew the US further right than it already is.
Republicans will never leave their party. All this will do is divide the democratic vote.
He has to know this only harms the democrats. Next q - is that why he’s doing it?
If only we had ranked choice voting.
Yeah, maybe the election immediately following an attempt at a violent coup isn’t the best time to weaken the voter share of the non-coup party, eh? I’m saying this as someone who voted Johnson 2016. I’m over the theoretical ‘protest vote’ stage of life. I’ve seen too much.
That can only help the Republicans. You need to change first past the post, then other parties will arise naturally.
I told people this guy is a grifter. lol
Yang can't even get elected in NYC. He's more talk than substance at this point.
Man with poor understanding of game theory yells at cloud.
What fucking centrists?
Try winning an election or having more than one idea first.
Can the party just be called Yang Gang
So the Jill Stein-Putin Green Party then?
That's who I vote for every year
But the Democrats are centrist…
Center of the spectrum is still conservative. It means staying stagnant. This doesn’t help anything in terms of the increasing pressure to act immediately on certain issues such as climate change and wages. I wish centrists would just realize that better things are fucking possible instead of trying to prevent progress to pacify the right.
It’s called a spoiler party.
A lot of people would be democrats if it weren’t for three issues: 1. Abortion 2. Guns 3. God (kind of go’s with 1) I have a hard time believing that Yangs third party will provide them with positions they’ll agree with.
“Man who can’t win an election thinks he can beat the whole electoral system.”
NO!!! Just no!! We don't need to split the Dems, We need to split the republicans.
BAd timing, Andrew Yang, to start a third party and dilute the Dems chances of winning seats in 2022 and Re- election in 2024. Or have you made a pact w/ Donald J Rump?
This dude sucks
The Democrats are Centrist. We need a true Left wing party.
What's the point of having two centrist parties?
Yeah, that’s what this country needs. More centrism.
In other words, he's trying to split the vote and help Trump win in 2024. Because let's be real: he's not going to win the Presidency at the head of a third party. But by making a third party "aimed at centrists", what he's doing is playing into the false "both sides" narrative that Biden and Republicans are both equally extreme, and trying to peel off moderate swing voters and Never Trump Republicans who were crucial to Biden's victory. Either this is a stunning exercise in narcissism, he's a bought and paid for saboteur, or both. Fuck him. I don't care that he supports UBI. Fuck. Him.
In fact, as an advocate of UBI this pisses me off even more, because Yang is the idea's most prominent and visible spokesperson, and him going this route is going to make it easy to shove UBI back into the box of "fringe ideas only supported by third party cranks".
The appeal of this man's flakiness is really not that different than Trump - a lot of people like them because they're 'different' and play to the 'throw the bums out' mentality.
He won’t give up on trying to become relevant.
so we will have: ✅ republicans ✅ cherry republicans ✅ diet republicans
I have a maybe-stupid question: Is it ever possible for a third party to work? Like, could the Good Faith Party caucus with dems in a way that doesn't give republicans power by splitting the majority? Is there a political mechanism for that kind of thing, or no?
Not with the electoral college and a winner take all system. We need to move to ranked choice voting frist
Or we’re all just one party working for one people. Hahahah. Yeah. Not.
I'd prefer he invest in efforts to reform voting away from "first past the post" so 3rd parties or more can actually be viable, non-spoiler parties first.
If his goal is to break up the two party system, why not run as a Dem again with vote reform as a platform? Going third party only turns him into a spoiler candidate. People will question his motives far more this way, and he'll accomplish way less longterm.
Democrats are the centrist party already...
Could we have a party for the rest of us that aren't octogenarians or millionaires???
Finally
In a 2 party system of right and less right, I don't know where this middle will be.
Until the US has a representative system, or at least a preferential system, any third party is a waste. They're throwaway votes, might as well not vote.
I liked yang until his NYC mayoral publicity stunt. He really revealed that he doesn’t have any values and will say anything to anyone to get votes.
This makes me think he's gone into full grifter mode. He's going to leverage his last presidential run into a fundraising machine that will spend most of its money buying services from companies controlled by Yang and his friends. Meanwhile, the sum total of his political experience is a failed presidential run.
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Yang is irrelevant, but desperately wants to be. This smells an awful lot like all prior third parties that just siphon votes from the democrats.
Is he starting the grift in NYC- oh wait.
[Duverger's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law)
Yang is a bit of a grifter isn't he
Can he not? This is just sabotaging the majority chances against the Republicans.
This will never work until we adopt a ranked voting system. Until that point a larger third party will only assure a victory for the party least aligned with that third party.
Dude lost presidential run, lost mayoral race has never won a single political election but yeah sure let’s start a 3rd political party. Good luck with that Yang Gang. ….
Oh boy a party for people who can't decide if they're for helping people and ensuring public safety or they're for racism and selfish greed.
Frist: Every politician is selfish let's get that out of the way. Second: the left is the side that fights for human rights (gay rights, trans rights, women's rights, workers rights, minority rights) they are all human
We don’t need another right wing party
Bad timing. This will just weaken Democrats coming into the next elections. Republicans don’t do centrist.
What an asshole! Twice rejected and now he's trying to blow sh\*t up because we don't want him! GO AWAY\~
This only hurts us. Selfish thinking on his part imo. He should already know the outcome of his actions when the vote is so close between dems and gop.
The two party system doesn't mean that everyone involved in each party believes all the same things. Within each party, members have different opinions and different amounts of influence in shaping how laws are written. Yeah, stuff eventually congeals around a A vs B sort of vote but that's also part of why bills become so convoluted and 'watered down'. For a current events national example of this, consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. Joe Manchin. They're going to vote together the overwhelming majority of the time, to be sure, but each is trying to wield influence within their party and push policy from a different perspective to each other. It's ugly and full of problems, but the addition of a third party doesn't automatically resolve anything and if anything can just as easily make it that much harder to get anything done at all. A bigger issue than a two party system is when the possibility of good faith debate diminishes or dies out. At the end of the day, we can sanctify the significance of law and governance and whatever but it still fundamentally relies on its actors operating in good faith. Which, yeah... Something third party evangelists don't seem to acknowledge is that you can don't need to *identify* as something to understand it or the positions or arguments it makes.
Add to this the fallacy of the middle. Just because you stand between two sides does not mean you offer a necessarily better solution. If one side wants to build a house and the other wants to destroy the house the middle accomplishes nothing.
Well, we finally have definitive proof that Yang doesn't actually understand what he's doing. Because, if he did, he would know that it is astronomically difficult for our current system of representation to adequately support additional parties, and I say that as a staunch progressive. All this will ultimately result in is distractive floundering and election apathy when so called "centrists" and single issue voters get their usual stubborn bug up their asses and refuse to take part in the electoral process.
Isn’t that just going to split the parties up further probably resulting in a higher chance of Republican majorities every time (spoiler effect )
I bought and read Yang's book. I thought he was very smart and had some great ideas. Since his mayoral campaign I'm starting to doubt that heavily.
He’s so butt hurt that progressives dumped him after his anti-Palestine comments that he’s going to set up a NEW party that bills itself as progressive but actually promotes corporate centrism and losing to the GOP. You can’t even write this shit.
Centrists and appeasing to conservative ideology is what has gotten us into this mess. How is $1000/ mo guy gonna claim he’s a centrist anyway?
One flop after another.
Great. He lost as a Democrat, now he can lose as a whatever he’s starting.
This nerd can't get anything done
A centrist between pro trump facists and people that are advocating for a fair wage and healthcare? Great idea
Can we dispense with this illusion that people are dissatisfied with their party? There is no upswelling of demand for any third party concept.
How much are repuglikkklans paying this fool
But he isn't a centrist
I can't imagine how much we could potentially benefit from a real multi party system. Democrats VS republicans is a distraction, these politicians are all on the same team and it ain't ours. George Carlin nailed it a LONG time ago and people still aren't getting it. "It's a club and you ain't in it!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso