Reacting to Andrew Yang's "The Last Election"

 So I'm a bit late on this one, but Andrew Yang wrote a fictional book about his vision of how the 2024 election would play out. It's not as good as The War on Normal People or Forward, and it's an entirely different kind of book. Rather than being a nonfiction and fact based book, it is a fictional novel set during the 2023-2024 election cycle, ending in early 2025 with the next president being elected. The names of the candidates are changed or left out altogether, although they seem based on real people. The third party "Maverick Party" candidate is basically an analogue to himself, running on things like UBI and human centered capitalism. The republican is very clearly Donald Trump, and the democrat seems to be based on Jared Polis, based on the contextual clues in the book (white male Colorado governor who happens to be a billionaire, all the primary candidates seem based on real figures too). It follows the Yang like character and his campaign through the election cycle, with different days being different pivotal moments. He faces scandals, there's talk of extreme political violence, a plot by the military to seize control and to call for a contingent election. Public officials are assassinated, party conventions erupt in violence. and it seems like America is breaking down at the seams. 

 Given Andrew Yang has been talking about America heading toward a civil war, it makes sense, but it really does express the worst case scenario of his fears. The fact is, he seems to "both sides" things too much. On the one hand, I admire his emotional distance from the democratic party. Even if I hate the dems and kinda have the same views as him, I still believe we should stick by the democrats, and that, ultimately, change needs to come from within them. And given that we do face threats to our democracy, we need to rally around the democrats to prevent America from descending into the worst case scenario. He looks at the democrats from the outside in, viewing leftists as figures who eat their own and can't be pleased, while seeing the liberal democratic establishment as being completely and utterly worthless. if theres anything I agree with him on, its his portrayal of the democratic party and figures like chuck schumer, who are quite literally going down with the ship as it sinks. The republican party he seems to ascribe as being more violent and more authoritarian, and let's face it, even if he doesn't say it, we all know the republican candidate is trump, and that many points in the book are very similar to how trump would act. From pardoning J6ers, to inciting violence and undermining faith in the election system, yeah, it's trump. 

Of course....again, he both sides it in a way. He acts like this breakdown of America and its norms and faith in democracy and the polarization is a both sides issue. It isn't. I blame the republicans FULL STOP. They've been constructing an alternative reality for their officials and voter base to live in, a "post truth world" if you will where many people no longer know what's up or down, left or right, and quite frankly, I fully blame the disease of modern partisanship, polarization, and loss of faith in our institutions and elections on them. Yes, democrats are worthless and complicit. And maybe they're shady with their primaries, but those are the worst things I have to say about them. If America IS in a civil war, it's one where one side is fighting and the other is refusing to fight back, for the sake of those institutions. 

Still...despite the greatly exaggerated takes on political violence, there are some events that werent all that different from the real world. Like in the book some guy tried to assassinate a SCOTUS justice. In real life, a similar figure took potshots at Trump but failed, and many of the same forces of polarization and the blame game happened. We had Charlie Kirk get shot last year by a sniper. We had Luigi Mangione shoot a heathcare exec. So yeah, we are in a period of political violence, just not as extreme as indicated.

 **SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT** 

Ultimately, Yang's character, who was named Cooper in the book, basically ran as an independent against the republicans and democrats, taking it all the way to election day and screwing up the vote in a way where it did force a contingent election. No candidate secured the popular vote, no candidate secured an electoral college majority, so it was thrown to congress and the republican candidate won because most states are red leaning. Our contingent election procedures are basically a vote by geography, not people. And the result was very undemocratic. While all 3 candidates all won roughly 1/3 of the vote and won 1/3 of the electoral college, the republicans won because they controlled the legislatures. And they defended it in traditional fashion. "Well it's a republic, not a democracy." Yeah yeah yeah. Weasel words of weasel people who have disdain toward the will of the people. That is, by the way, how the contingent election would play out. Doesnt make it right, but it is the system. I agree it should change in that regard. 

But yeah, that's why it's considered "the last election", the republicans win, undemocratically, and it's wondered if we even will have future elections. The country is so divided, again, there was a plot by the military to take control of the country, and it looks like the country is so fractured and no one trusts the institutions that it's unclear if there will be elections. ANd it is assumed that the republicans probably won't let there be anyway. They consolidate power, and yeah, that's the end of the system. 

Im not sure if this yang scenario is better or worse than what happened. In the real world, the violence was significantly less. Yang's third party run didn't happen (and i wonder if this book is why it didn't happen....he knew that if he did run it would screw things up and split votes), but due to low voter turnout on the democratic side, a democratic president whose mind turned to jello, forcing harris to step in last minute, and a general malaise surrounding inflation, immigration, crime, gaza, etc., Trump won. I know he didn't have to win. I even considered the race a tossup on election day, and I already dramatized my reaction to the results as they came in. And I myself wondered if this was the last election. After all, Trump is a danger to democracy. He's been so since January 6th. He was the one who undermined american faith in elections in Yang's book. HE did. By making up fake narratives of it being rigged and inciting his followers to attack. And in the real world, we tried to hold him accountable, but failed because the legal system didn't act fast enough. He talked about how if you vote for him "you'd never have to vote again." He had that project 2025 ready to go. The American people shouldve known what they're getting into and they didn't.

To some extent, I do blame the democrats for this. Their complacency and internal problems are responsible for this mess. They forced Biden on us without much resistance, covering up his mental decline. They were the ones who pushed party unity so hard that we never had a fair and open primary process. And when Biden stepped aside, it was Harris. To be fair, even I supported Harris. She was the best for the job on such short notice. However, all of this comes back to the democrats core problems. Even now, democrats like to make Biden out to be a scapegoat. But let's face it, the rot of the democratic party went deeper than that. They were supposed to stop trump, and unlike in the book, there wasnt a third party insurgent mucking everything up. The closest thing was RFK Jr and Trump disarmed that threat by bringing him into his administration and letting him do his MAHA thing, to the horror of thinking Americans with at least a high school level understanding of medicine.  And...btw....if you ARE gonna run a third party campaign, THAT is the end goal. It's a pressure campaign to pressure the party closest to you to give you concessions. if Yang ran on UBI, it would be to pressure the dems into supporting UBI. In RFK's case, he ended up appealing to anti vax cranks and Trump basically brought him into his administration, giving him a prominent position with real world policy concessions to keep him happy. Arguably it helped win him the election, because those RFK voters went to MAGA. Again, if you're gonna go third party, that's how you do it. You ideally dont take it to election day. And if you do, you do it in an election year where the consequences of that isn't the system imploding followed by a republican coup. You do it where the assumption is "oh well, the dems lost, maybe they should listen next time." But if it really is potentially the "last election", and 2024 very well could have been....that's suicide. So basically, democracy committed suicide at the hands of Andrew yang's character in the book. In the real world, again, we didn't have that insurgent campaign, and what happened instead was that Trump just outright won the election. In some ways i guess the real world scenario is preferable, after all, the results were so straightforward that they were called the night of, and they were largely beyond (reasonable) dispute (I add the word reasonable because if Harris won by similar margins Trump would've thrown a tantrum and probably incited more violence). 

Either way...idk. I kinda feel somber either way. I mean...here....we lost, it was straightforward, but it does have a weimar germany feel to it. There are questions of whether we will have fair elections in 2026 and 2028. I've covered a lot of the screwery Trump is trying so far. One story I didnt cover that I probably should have (I guess I'll mention it now) is how Trump trying to seize voter rolls in stuff in states like Georgia could be dry runs for him attempting to seize the ballots come election day 2026. After all, it's not the voters who decide who won, it's the person who counts the voters, to paraphrase Stalin. And Trump is a lot more like Stalin than many of us would like to admit. So can we come out of this mess that is Trump's second term? Well the history books arent written yet and it feels like reality is its own thriller novel. 

I guess I'll end it there. All in all, was it a good novel? Eh, it was okay. Quite frankly, the real world version of what happened is far more interesting and realistic. Mainly because its real. Yang's version is kinda just him playing out a hypothetical 2024 where he runs and his forward party splits the vote screwing everything up. Many elements are greatly exaggerated and unrealistic, compared to the real world version. 

All in all, I will say one more thing though. If Yang does run in 2028...he should run as a democrat, explicitly to stop this from happening. Will he win? Probably not. But honestly, I would like to see him try. I still believe in his vision of UBI and human centered capitalism. I just recognize that things are so screwed right now we gotta fight to preserve democracy first, and that means siding with the democrats and getting Trump and his goons out of office. Like, that's priority #1 for me. Even above my UBI crap. Third party protest votes make sense when democracy isn't on the line, but when it is, you gotta protect democracy first. Sucks, but that's how it is.

So yeah, yang 2028...but hopefully as a democrat, not as an independent third party splitting the votes. Unless your plan is brinksmanship with dems to get them behind UBI and election reform....don't even try it.