Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party • Hacker News Board

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#561

Post by robertoandred » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

api wrote: post #330

Karto wrote: post #158

The top line, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward." kind of reminds me of Macron's "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm, taking over the presidency AND the parliament only one year after its foundation, with very few previously known political figures in its ranks. The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics, and offered an alternative to fed-up voters who didn't dare turn to the…

> doing management rather than politics, This. I want someone who will throw the culture war out the window (both the left and right wings of it) and focus 100% on competent problem solving and execution and on real world practical problems facing the country. These are problems like infrastructure, transportation, water security in the West, energy modernization and decarbonization, repatriation of critical manufact…

Sounds like you want someone on the left.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#562

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #498

ineedasername wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indictment of the structure, more so than the individual. It seems to me that someone who wants to change the way the country works should at least be able to do a little better with how their campaign works and treats it's people. Yes, the work is short term and I think people know that going in. But mistreatment & broken promises? Not acceptable. Again, for someone trying to change the country, changing those aspec…

Yang had a large article in politico describing the flaws of the campaign process. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/03/andrew-yan...

Fine-- campaigning is hard, and a bit broken. So is running the country, but on a much much much larger scale. As I said, if a candidate can't do the former without staff mistreatment and broken lies, I'm not optimistic about when they suddenly have to deal with issues many orders of magnitude larger and with less control.

The fact that Yang acknowledges the issue doesn't make it better.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#563

Post by tangent128 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

api wrote: post #330

Karto wrote: post #158

The top line, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward." kind of reminds me of Macron's "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm, taking over the presidency AND the parliament only one year after its foundation, with very few previously known political figures in its ranks. The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics, and offered an alternative to fed-up voters who didn't dare turn to the…

> doing management rather than politics, This. I want someone who will throw the culture war out the window (both the left and right wings of it) and focus 100% on competent problem solving and execution and on real world practical problems facing the country. These are problems like infrastructure, transportation, water security in the West, energy modernization and decarbonization, repatriation of critical manufact…

It's not easy to divorce "culture war" from "problem solving", since the question of whether problems even _exist_ and need to be solved is frequently a culture-war issue.

For example, you can't pursue "energy modernization and decarbonization" in the USA without taking a side in the "does anthropogenic climate change exist?" culture war.

Any infrastructure plan, whether heavy-infrastructure or social-infrastructure, touches the culture-war questions of "should the government subsidize industry?" and "should the government subsidize the working class?"

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#564

Post by Loughla » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #526

Loughla wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, and a lack of understanding of the tragedy of the commons. That's the pure and simple of it. I need to be able to exploit [resource a] to be able to feed my family. For example, take fertilizing a field or crop. So it runs off into the water. Well, that has never been a problem on my farm. I don't have algae blooms and my pond is fine. They don't seem to understand that they are just one small part of the larg…

I think this somewhat misses that pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are different issues with distinct (sometimes opposed) mitigations. Pollution, like runoff and smog can be _much_ more locally tangible, both in the "i can see that we're putting something into the air/water that wasn't there before" sense and the "I can see the damage this is causing relatively directly". Greenhouse gas emissions is much more e…

I don't think it misses that point at all, unless I misunderstood you. I think it actually absolutely exemplifies what you wrote.

They identify that something is happening, but do not know what to attribute it to. Concrete steps that can be taken are in your immediate proximity. You can see the immediate effects of pollution, therefore you can try to fix that. You may not be able to see the immediate effects of greenhouse gasses or climate change, therefore it is not a problem.

It's the same as pollution not really being a problem until it impacts you, in particular. The same (I would argue confusing) attitude, I think.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#565

Post by mullingitover » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #181

mullingitover wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying they should just try to get major parties to adopt cannabis legalization as a platform plank. I'm saying they should use cannabis to get adequate popular support for their party in hopes of getting the other parties to adopt the non-cannabis elements of their platform. Federal legalization/decriminalization is going to happen eventually, so this is a limited-time opportunity for a third party. Make hay…

Green party has this plank and its not helping them win any seats or have anyone pick up their other ideas.

I'd argue the Green Party's main ideas are already embraced by the democrats. I'm not saying Yang's party has a prayer of picking up even a single seat, either, just picking up enough votes to get their ideas noticed.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#566

Post by netcan » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

realce wrote: post #462

netcan wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear it. Yang Gang had/has the seeds of an interesting political paradigm, and a lot of that just emerged as people showed up on the sub. The paradigm was just not built to last, grow or evolve. Do you see a path from A to B? It would be a shame to see a general dispersal, without any form of continuity.

A lot of people worked very hard to build that bridge from the flash of the POTUS run to a more typical "movement" structure, but even in those efforts the disconnect between the motives and trust of the volunteers vs Andrew's crew was omnipresent. Humanity Forward couldn't even convince the volunteer orgs to adopt their name or charter without some extreme pushback due to their treatment of volunteers during the cam…

It would be interesting to hear your take on the whole drama a year or three from now. I imagine it's all a bit fresh for retrospect.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#567

Post by nielsbot » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #302

nielsbot wrote: post #138

The Democracy Dollars plank doesn't say it will eliminate money in politics, so I don't think it goes far enough. Love the plank on eliminating the revolving door however. We really need that. (cf. Sinema)

I think that essentially, because of the supreme court's interpretation of money as speech, it would be very difficult to pass a law to get money out of politics without the SCOTUS overturning it. So at that point you need a constitutional ammendment or to pack/replace the supreme court. Both of these are incredibly ambitious things to do. So it's probably that this freedom bucks idea is a way of dis-empowering the p…

Probably hopeless, but there could be an amendment.

http://wolf-pac.com

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#568

Post by nielsbot » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #177

nielsbot wrote: post #138

The Democracy Dollars plank doesn't say it will eliminate money in politics, so I don't think it goes far enough. Love the plank on eliminating the revolving door however. We really need that. (cf. Sinema)

I read that and I'm not sure how his points eliminate the revolving door. "Ban all legislators and anyone who works at a regulatory agency from working for a lobbying firm for a period of time after they leave office/their position." Won't change anything. Ajit Pai isn't working as a lobbiest yet he revolved right into his next gig. "Increase salaries for these individuals to make up for this limitation." Legislators…

I think once you "get in" you end up working to stay in. Which is what lobbyists give you. Money for your campaigns.

AlsoL if you don't take the money, they'll give it to a political competitor instead.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#569

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #358

badRNG wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean let's look: - 2020 - Biden - 2016 - Trump - 2012 - Obama - 2008 - Obama - 2004 - Bush - 2000 - Bush - 1996 - Clinton - 1992 - Clinton I'd think that Bush represented a socially conservative position, and I'm not entirely certain that Trump was any more conservative on particular social issues. Additionally, I think Clinton represented a middle of the road approach to social issues (RFRA, massive deregulation,…

Economically, neoliberalism is indistinguishable from conservativism so I’m not sure what “hardline” means (it also was certainly not Obama — he talked a good game while still murdering children with drones and funneling tax dollars to corporations hand over fist). Liberalism takes the worst parts of both the left and the right and mashes them together. You can’t divorce socialism from social progress — they are two…

[deleted]

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#570

Post by netcan » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

realce wrote: post #517

UIZealot wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> IMO, this is an indictment of the structure, more so than the individual. > 1000% agree. So you agree that it's the structure of the organization that's at fault, not Andrew Yang?

Who manages the organization? Where does the buck stop? The statement is "more so than" the individual, not the binary option you provided. I get that you're offended by my complaints, I don't want to be a messenger of total cynicism and I apologize if I haven't framed my experience in a way that's more helpful to you. I like Andrew personally, I support the majority of his ideology. He's a bad manager and my experie…

In a sense, this kind of confirms some of the instinctive, "left wing" suspicion that Yang's a naive "enlightened centrist" type. Inclination to bring in experts and consultants to run things via "best practices" and such. The equivalent of hiring Deloitte to tell you how to restructure your operations.

It's the kind of thing that stings a lot of left wing movements, which is now why they are now all crazy paranoid of being "co-opted."

It might be interesting to see if forward learns, or repeats the error.

Andrew is a smart guy, and he seems to come up with smart ideas when he focuses on them. OTOH, he seems to overlook other things and then default to a generic. A party is not a corporation or even a non profit, at least a democratic party can't be. You can't just hire employees, appoint executives and run it like that.

I think americans have difficulty envisioning a party. You have so few. Republicans and Democrats are so old, big and established that it's impossible to imagine them without a ton of power. The libertarians & whatnot are so quirky that they seem more like a convention than a political party.

Ultimately though, a party is a political club. There are members. They interact with one another, nominate candidates, develop policies & such. There's always/usually a two tier system. Actual candidates, campaign managers and whatnot obviously have more power, are more engaged, etc. But, at least the concept of membership exists. It's not supposed to operate as a fan club. It isn't the Foo Fighters.

I heard some of his interview. He has policy ideas. I didn't hear him say anything about the party itself, or got the impression that he has thought about it much.