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Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

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Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#501

Post by rayiner »

winternett wrote: post #497
realce wrote: post #353

I raised over 400k for Andrew's POTUS run and devoted a year of my life to running his official Reddit (104k subs at peak), then joined a SuperPAC to further his positions after the run. The campaign team was full of fools who squandered almost every good turn received, most campaign workers were paid less than minimum wage, and Andrew eventually stole the pac's name and branding - Humanity Forward - put everyone out…

Elections now are generally 2 people with influence, connections, and wealth (or someone that can be exploited as a puppet) that are chosen by financial backers to win, and a remaining pool of stooges and fake implants meant to take votes away from either of the 2 people mentioned prior. Everything else, including the idea that an honest candidate can "climb out of nowhere" and win hearts and votes, is a pipe dream b…

The alternative is where the party doesn’t control the nominee, like the GOP, and you get the base nominating Trump.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#502

Post by rayiner »

I love “grace and tolerance” as a core principle. One of the things I used to respect about Americans is their ability to deal with the reality of the world as it is, including having an aloofness from politics. It wasn’t like Bangladesh where the losing party calls for violent strikes after every election. That confidence has been totally shaken over the last five years. Our mentality is becoming like that of a third world country.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#503

Post by AlexandrB »

rayiner wrote: post #501
winternett wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elections now are generally 2 people with influence, connections, and wealth (or someone that can be exploited as a puppet) that are chosen by financial backers to win, and a remaining pool of stooges and fake implants meant to take votes away from either of the 2 people mentioned prior. Everything else, including the idea that an honest candidate can "climb out of nowhere" and win hearts and votes, is a pipe dream b…

The alternative is where the party doesn’t control the nominee, like the GOP, and you get the base nominating Trump.

That seems... preferable? Say what you will about Trump, but his ineptitude and lack of party connections meant he was limited in what he could accomplish. Contrast that to the Bush presidency and its two foreign wars.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#504

Post by dragonwriter »

netcan wrote: post #296
dragonwriter wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That "consensus" happened when the centre left accepted structural changes made by the previous "generation's" new right No, it didn't, at least not in the US. The neoliberal consensus happenened, in the US, when the center- right faction took over the more left-leaning of the two major parties.

I'm not disputing the US clinton part. I'm disputing the Thatcher part. Blaire is "the center-right faction taking over the more left-leaning of the two major parties " and succeeding politically in the UK.

> I'm not disputing the US clinton part. I'm disputing the Thatcher part.

I wasn't disputing your dispute of the Thatcher part, I was disputing (in the US context) the center-left part.

> Blaire is "the center-right faction taking over the more left-leaning of the two major parties" and succeeding politically in the UK.

From my American perspective, it looked like that, but 1990s UK internal political party dynamics isn't something I’m nearly as confident of as their US parallels, so I wasn't going to take a stand on that.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#505

Post by khuey »

AlexandrB wrote: post #503
rayiner wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is where the party doesn’t control the nominee, like the GOP, and you get the base nominating Trump.

That seems... preferable? Say what you will about Trump, but his ineptitude and lack of party connections meant he was limited in what he could accomplish. Contrast that to the Bush presidency and its two foreign wars.

Bush was able to "accomplish" those wars because the country was "united" after 9/11. It didn't have much to do with his personal competence or connections.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#506

Post by ordinaryradical »

Loughla wrote: post #361
pjc50 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world. ... except Germany? I think it's more popular on the ground than you'd think, but it's very unpopular in the media who like their politics to be professional wrestling.

No, it is very unpopular in the US in those who regularly vote in primaries. The primary decides the race, for many, many elections. The presidential race is not exempt from this, either. To draw enough primary voters to make the ballot in one of the two major parties, candidates are, increasingly, needing to take extreme stances on most social and economic issues. (for example, look at how many people came out for T…

Yang explains this exact issue so well here: https://youtu.be/-2O3JYaELW0?t=1038

This is part of the reason he and others will be pushing for structural changes, including open primaries, as central to the platform. Changing the mechanics of the elections is the only way to enable a return to centrism in the US.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#507

Post by inanutshellus »

rayiner wrote: post #501
winternett wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elections now are generally 2 people with influence, connections, and wealth (or someone that can be exploited as a puppet) that are chosen by financial backers to win, and a remaining pool of stooges and fake implants meant to take votes away from either of the 2 people mentioned prior. Everything else, including the idea that an honest candidate can "climb out of nowhere" and win hearts and votes, is a pipe dream b…

The alternative is where the party doesn’t control the nominee, like the GOP, and you get the base nominating Trump.

Notably -- and in alignment with winternett's post -- there were an unheard-of 16 nominees that year. Further, they stayed in the race, ensuring the rational voter's influence was split as many times as possible.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#508

Post by mywittyname »

Loughla wrote: post #364
h2odragon wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A political party in the USA needs an engaged, interested, reliable representative for every single county election commission, at the very least. The Libertarians don't have that. The Greens never bothered with rural areas. The Perot believers and the Tea Parties had boots enough but no co-ordination.

The green party has such an opportunity in rural areas. I've never understood why they refuse to see any amount of trade-off. Living in a rural area for a majority of my life, I can tell you that (not to make a no-true-Scotsman argument, but) most people are very concerned about the environment. When you are constantly surrounded by reminders that the world is changing, it is impossible to refute that fact. That many…

Maybe they are concerned in an abstract sense, and definitely they are when it negatively impacts them. The problem is they offer little to no support for EPA, and red states have been gutting their state EPAs (or putting into place shills for mega-polluters) for decades now, because they are "bad for business".

A few years ago I was reading about an issue with the cleanup of a coal fired power plant. The power plant owners collected a cleanup surcharge for the entire life of the plant, and put it into escrow. It was supposed to be used to handle site cleanup after decommissioning. For some reason, the company was allowed to sell the site, escrow, and all liabilities to some random 1-person LLC. This person then spent all the escrow funds paying companies he owned to do none of the work properly, and now the people in the region who are dealing with the effects of this botched cleanup have no recourse. Coal retention ponds are nasty, nasty things and because they weren't properly dealt with, its leaking into the water supply.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#509

Post by spamizbad »

dbingham wrote: post #477
netcan wrote: post #325

What's missing here, IMO, is a party. Who's with him? Do you have defectors from the 2 parties? Independents or popular figures joining up? Candidates being stood? A political party is not a manifesto, it's an organisation. I actually think there's room for a party to start gaining ground in the US. There are so many elected offices that the surface area is huge. Great for "guerilla tactics." IE, earning easy victori…

There is no room for a third party to start gaining ground in the US. We already have a third and fourth party - the Libertarian and Green parties - that have been trying to gain traction for years. Neither has been able to. The Greens came the closest with Nader in 2000. The reason for that is structural. The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that…

> The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that shuts out any attempt to gain traction by third and fourth parties.

It's more than that: The Democratic - (and arguably the Republican party at one time) - are functionally "big tent" parties. For example, the Democratic party has a progressive faction, an "establishment" faction, and a centrist/moderate faction.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#510

Post by jb1991 »

realce wrote: post #353

I raised over 400k for Andrew's POTUS run and devoted a year of my life to running his official Reddit (104k subs at peak), then joined a SuperPAC to further his positions after the run. The campaign team was full of fools who squandered almost every good turn received, most campaign workers were paid less than minimum wage, and Andrew eventually stole the pac's name and branding - Humanity Forward - put everyone out…

I thought the writing was on the wall when, during his campaign, he made self-deprecating racist jokes about his own ethnicity, furthering damaging stereotypes.
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