Okay, so, I've been making my disdain with Yang's new merger with two other third parties no secret, and I've been getting some backlash for it. It's amazing how people are so willing to fall on their swords for Yang. Don't get me wrong, I tend to like the guy a lot generally, but I like his IDEAS, not him as a person. While I've been a supporter of "forward" since its inception, I've always maintained some level of independence, so that I would be able to criticize the movement if needed, and trust me, here, it's needed.
Yang supporters will say nothing else but ranked choice matters any more. UBI doesn't matter, because we can't pass it anyway. We need ranked choice voting. And they'll even use the threat of civil war to punctuate the need for a third party. UBI can wait. After all, after Yang gets RCV passed, he can go back and pass UBI, right? Right?
Uh...will he?
Here's the thing. Yang isn't the first person to claim the problem is we need more centrism. He isn't the first one to appeal to former conservative voters. This has been the democratic strategy since 1992 explicitly, and arguably since 1968.
The democratic party used to be a working class party, but in the 1960s, a schism formed over civil rights, where the southern democratic party went to war with the federal party. The south's democratic had long been a hot bed of the most racist elements of the country. The republicans used to be progressive. They were the party of abe lincoln, and later teddy roosevelt. The democrats were the party of the KKK. FDR was able to make a coalition of working class voters around economic issues, but the party was always divided socially between the progressives and the more racist types. And in the 1960s, the progressives won. Johnson figured he could bring African Americans into the party, but in the process, he lost the white southern base that made it up.
This caused the democrats to flounder in the late 1960s and 1970s, as republicans started catering to disaffected democrats using dog whistle politics, and using outrage over religious based social issues (including an "activist" supreme court) to win over religious people too. And the democrats, fell apart. They were deemed "too far left", and while much of the problem was social issues, the dems instead started blaming economic issues. Including, for example, Mcgovern pushing a UBI that no one really wanted (to be fair, mcgovern sucked as a UBI advocate and did great harm to the movement).
Of course, the social issues were the big issues that really seemed to drive voters. In the early 1970s the economy was fine. if anything it was the best it ever was. It was social outrage and that good economy that mostly drove people right. And as the country descended into stagflation, people really soured on the new deal paradigm and it drove people to the right for a generation.
The democrats got destroyed. After carter, they had zero credibility. Reagan came along, he redefined the terms, and the democrats since had to come up with alternative strategies to remain relevant. And this caused them to cater to a different crowd. They ceded the economic issues to the right, running on a new "third way" and pushing centrism, claiming the left was too far left, and the right was too far right. So they were the sensible "centrist" alternative. And they managed to bring together a coalition of white professional class voters who were fiscally conservative and socially liberal, as well as minority voters.
And this strategy was effective, but always kind of unstable. It worked sometimes, causing the democrats to win elections in 1992 and 1996, but then they lost in 2000 and 2004. Obama running on hope and change won him 2008, and in 2012 he still won on a working class platform, but then in 2016 Hillary basically alienated the country and trump won. And Biden barely won 2020, with 2024 being up in the air.
The reason the democrats have been struggling so bad was because they abandoned the working class. When they at least appealed to the working class and ran on economics, they'd win, but when they lost their luster and ran to the center, they lost.
The lesson is the same that FDR tried to tell people in the 1940s. When the democrats run on working class politics, they win, but without them, they lose.
The dems had temporary success in the 1990s with their strategy, but since then, they've lost it.
And now, we have a dysfunctional political system. Since the 1980s the republicans have radicalized. But the democrats remain the same centrist party fundamentally that they've been since the 1990s.
And in 2016 the flaws with this were readily apparent. people wanted solutions. They wanted real world fixes to what the economy has become. living standards for the bottom 80% of stagnated, and for the top 20%, grew. And now, the democrats are the party of much of that top 20%. I saw something recently suggesting more professional class people vote democrat, while working class people don't. And it's those working class people who stop the democrats from being productive.
We're always told, oh, we can't have that. That's not pragmatic. You need to compromise. You need to ask for less. you'll never get that. And people get pissed, and embittered, and vote republican out of spite.
Trump promised to make the country great again. He promised to bring back the jobs. Sure, he was full of crap, but most people aren't very smart and his populism won him a lot of support. And the democrats just doubled down on centrism.
Now we have Biden in power, nothing is getting done, we're back to stagflating again as the federal reserve crunches down on interest rates even though as we discussed that isnt the proper solution for this specific crisis, and people are screaming about how giving people money is the problem (when it isn't).
And in this environment, Yang decides now's the time to back off of UBI, and embrace centrism. How we need more centrist solutions. That the partisan divisions are tearing us apart. How people are taking up arms against the government. And how we need a movement that brings people together over...ranked choice voting.
Here's the thing. Everything Yang is doing now, is what the democrats have done to got us in this situation. They ran to the center. They tried to compromise. They abandoned previous causes to bring in new voters, and then they decided, gee, you know what? We're making a killing with this new coalition, we're better off abandoning the working class to push more centrism. We're getting so many donors. And as such, their appeal to people like me is "well we cant do anything but you have to vote for us anyway."
Here's the thing. I generally respect Yang. But unless he has really good answers to my concerns, I cant support what he's doing. because here's the thing. He's doing exactly what the democrats did. he's throwing his old cause under the bus to bring in a new crowd of people, and once he does that, even if he succeed, he'll effectively kill the UBI movement. He won't go back to pass UBI later. Not if doing so loses him all of his new supporters. He'll make the same sacrifice the dems made. Abandon the economic progressives who made them what they are, and then pursue more centrism.
And this centrism is what's killing the political system. As I see it, if the democrats had stepped up and offered material solutions to peoples' problems in 2016, Trump never would've won and the GOP would be the party realigning to the center to remain relevant.
The reason the dems are at risk of losing again is because they're floundering on the economy. They ran to the center with biden's candidacy, the they failed to pass anything because of joe manchin and kirsten sinema. How is MORE CENTRISM the solution here? CENTRISM is what got us here!
And now with inflation high and Biden's presidency just sputtering out under the sheer ineptitude of the democrats to do anything, the GOP are once again emboldened and can win again. Honestly, it would be over if they didn't jump the gun on the supreme court and start banning abortion rights. Yeah they finally got that going and now the cause isn't even supported by most people, just the insane 1/3 of the country.
But that's the thing. The GOP's actual policy positions are insanely unpopular. Yet they wield most of the institutional power and win most of the elections. Why? Because the dems are a bunch of worthless centrists who don't do anything, that's why.
And yes, I know I rip identity politics a lot. it's the ONE THING they seem to be willing to die on a hill over. Mainly because it keeps their constituents happy, even if it loses the rest of the country. It's their way of doing something when they otherwise dont do anything. it's the one politically safe move they have to motivate SOME voters without alienating their rich stakeholders.
But...that's the thing. If we wanna talk about the elephant in the room, it's those stakeholders that are the issue. And now yang is trying to play ball with those kinds of people. This is just going to detooth forward as a pro working class movement. No UBI, no medicare for all, sorry. Just more worthless centrism.
I'm sorry. I can't support this.
Yes, Yang is right. We have economic issues. His war on normal people is one of the most prolific books on the economy I have read. Yes, yang is right, polarization is a problem. We have one party that is insanely out of touch with reality and growing more and more dangerous to democracy itself, and the other party is a bunch of worthless moderates squandering the movement and picking fights over sectarian identity issues that just make the problems worse.
This is why the country is in the crapper, and this is why we are locked into this situation.
This isn't going to change unless we have a party realignment. RCV can make that happen if it passes, but, if you dont have an economic movement to bring people back to the table of civility, well, we're screwed.
FDR, when he saved the country from the forces of fascism and communism, realized he needed to make america work in a way where most people wouldnt even be attracted to extremist ideologies. Because they would be having their needs met by the mainstream.
Honestly, I'd rather forward play a spoiler in a 2 party system, drawing attention to UBI, and forcing the two party system to adopt it in order to keep people happy, than go all in on RCV and more milquetoast centrism.
Europe also has the same problems as we do, and they have a multiparty democracy. Marine le pen came 2nd place in france. Britain had brexit. Germany has a growing alt right movement with AFD.
A multi party democracy is nice, and more options is a good thing, and I agree we need to break the duopoly.
But...it's better to break the duopoly in a way that causes it to realign itself on more favorable terms than go all in with a new voting method without fixing the material conditions.
The important thing is to break the existing coalitions apart. We dont actually NEED to break the two party system permanently. While it would be nice, it's a secondary goal relative to UBI.
I'm sorry, but without UBI there is no reason to support forward. As Andrew Yang himself once said, you need to get the economic boot off of peoples throats before they can care about anything else. Somewhere along the way, he seems to have forgotten that and got DC brain or something here. He said it in forward, sometimes you just have to deal with all of these forces that can corrupt you without you realizing it. And at this point, i think he found something that broke him.
Anyway, he has a podcast tomorrow and I plan to listen to what he has to say, but if I don't like it, I'm done with this movement.
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