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Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

forwardparty.com

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Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#571

Post by dbingham »

bobthepanda wrote: post #551
dbingham wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 problem is strategy. Going for broke by running a presidential candidate is a surefire way to lose , and no one really donates to parties that lose. Which is a problem, because presidential campaigns cost a crapton of money; Bernie 2016 cost $220M and that was the primary. If you look at successful third or fourth parties in FPTP nations, they are generally running lots of local campaigns, which are cheaper, give…

Most localities in the US are dominated by one of the major parties to the point where the primary becomes the election. That doesn't leave any room for a third party to break in either. Too many people never learn about local candidates and end up just pulling a straight ticket lever.

This is the end result of decades of gerrymandering.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#572

Post by gs17 »

jbaber wrote: post #157
carlosdp wrote: post #98

I feel like a lot of people take it as obvious that ranked-choice is just better. I have an alternate take: We just went through a simple first-past-the-post election in the US that a significant percentage of voters believe was rigged. This is the simplest system imaginable, the data is easily available to verify it was not rigged. Do we really think the average american will be able to grok how ranked-choice voting…

This is one of the arguments for approval voting. It's simple enough to be trusted by everybody with all the good properties of RCV and some superior things like rendering negative campaigning useless. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting https://electionscience.org/

Approval voting is my favorite method as well. The best benefit IMO is that someome who votes the same as before is still making a valid vote, they've just set their approval threshold high enough that only one candidate meets it.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#573

Post by ClayShentrup »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #86
endisneigh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval voting is simpler, doesn't require ballots to change and has the same effect in practice (but not in theory). I'd be surprised if an average person finds ranked choice voting to be simpler to understand than approval or FPTP.

Yeah, this is one huge advantage of approval voting. The main issue with approval voting though is that it's much harder for individuals to use when voting. It's tricky to figure out when to bullet vote vs not bullet vote. Simplicity to use != simplicity to count I think ranked choice is in that sweet spot where it is reasonably simple to use and simple to count.

It seems strange to give people worse election outcomes that they have to live with for 4 years at a time just to make their 5 minutes in the voting booth feel a little more pleasant.

Approval voting may not seem "fun", But thousands of voters have used it in Fargo and St Louis without any issue. All the evidence says it gets better results, is more resistant to strategic voting, and has a better chance of replacing the status quo.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#574

Post by vorpalhex »

ihattendorf wrote: post #483
vorpalhex wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> straight-up disinfo (I tend to look at their profiles for context) gets deleted quickly. That makes me extremely nervous. One can imagine a perverse mod who simply deletes comments based on which political subs they post in.

Honest question: what's the alternative? Maybe sign-off from multiple mods on every action? That'd be a tough sell to require double, triple, or more time from mods. Some sort of random review of x% of mod actions maybe?

Have a N strikes policy, track in-sub user infractions.

Have a public moderation log.

Reddit is unfortunately woefully under-equipped for moderators so the above is a strictly out of band process for Reddit specifically.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#575

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#576

Post by reducesuffering »

adventured wrote: post #367
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,…

Bush was definitely socially conservative. Trump was closer to middle of the road socially. Clinton was middle of the road socially for his time, at best. Trump was more progressive than Clinton. See for Clinton regressiveness: signed welfare reform (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act); was adamantly against gay marriage (the Defense of Marriage Act); don't ask don't tell; aggressively championed one of…

While true, politicians cant stray too far from their base, and there was 20 years of social progress in the general population between them: drug decriminalization, gay marriage, etc.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#577

Post by geeB »

_hilro wrote: post #463
geeB wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not have any personal experience, but sadly it does not sound too surprising from what's been out publicly. The moment he dropped out and immediately got the CNN job really changed my perception of him. Then after some events from his mayoral campaign, such as his Israel comments or the Staten Island ferry cowboy incident, it's pretty clear he is a politician like many others.

> the Staten Island ferry cowboy incident What's suspect about that? He stopped a guy assaulting a photojournalist and you have issues with it??

My issue was not with stopping the assault, but more with the fact that the story as told seemed quite embellished, ran on a number of outlets, and it seemed specifically tailored to garner votes.

To be specific, on one side the "bad guy" was a staten island guy wearing a cowboy hat in the midst of a hate crime epidemic soon after the capitol riots. On the other side, with pictures, a mentally ill person of color. The assaulted photographer was there shooting Yang, with many other campaign people and other photographers. All the accounts and pictures were released by the campaign, nobody pressed charges, and as far as I know nobody helped the guy get some help.

I hope that's a bit clearer. I wasn't there and don't really know what happened for a fact, but after looking at multiple sources my best guess was between cheesy embellishment and distasteful stunt.

Now I don't know what to think anymore... I thought it was widely discussed at the time, but I'm having a hard time finding the original coverage of the event on youtube, and the written articles I find seem more balanced than what I remember hearing. So maybe fake news got me on this one.

That said, the Israel comments and the CNN job had a lot more weight in changing my opinion (which to reiterate, is not "Yang is the worst", just "Yang is like his peers").

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#578

Post by asdff »

mullingitover wrote: post #565
asdff wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yangs ideas are not all that controversial to be fair among democrats as it is.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#579

Post by disneygibson »

hef19898 wrote: post #560
disneygibson wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the anti-slavery states hadn’t compromised with the slave ones, the Revolution would have failed. Slavery would have likely existed longer because the British would end up being allied to the slave states (likely still colonies.) Nothing is more nauseating that modern people looking upon the past with moral superiority.

Didn't the British abolish slavery before the US?

The British could abolish slavery because they no longer had any real economic incentive to keep it, as they had lost their colonies. They also then proceeded to exploit labor in India in barely better conditions.

If Britain retained its American colonies (because the slave holding ones didn’t join the revolution) then abolition might not have happened at all.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#580

Post by vorpalhex »

unethical_ban wrote: post #499
vorpalhex wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> straight-up disinfo (I tend to look at their profiles for context) gets deleted quickly. That makes me extremely nervous. One can imagine a perverse mod who simply deletes comments based on which political subs they post in.

Edit up front to say, it's unfortunate that you read that one line and got extremely nervous rather than take anything else I had put into consideration. I personally don't care where you post if you're being polite on the sub I moderate. I try to think of it like being the chairperson of a meeting, or the bartender at a local bar: Let people debate and disagree and even say stupid stuff, but if they say something ob…

I was hopefully tactful enough in my wording to raise the concern with the sentiment but not make it an accusation. I'm obviously reading into a statement you made a bit offhand. Please understand that I'm not saying you engage in any malfeasance.

However, different subs run differently. I may well engage in a nuanced and sourced debate in one subreddit, and frankly tell someone off in another. Subreddits are communities and communities have different standards of behavior.

Likewise, community membership is a terrible proxy for actual opinions or beliefs. I belong to many communities I disagree with, but I find monitoring them to be useful and sometimes engage in debates. I've found my debates with anti-vaxxers to be very enlightening - I still think people should get vaxxed but I understand my opposition.

All of this to say that a top down examination of a profile without context is worse than useless - it is actively misleading.

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