Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party • Hacker News Board

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#591

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #314

spyckie2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important not to confuse the goal with the action. I don't think he wants to become a politician. He wants to enact political change. These are two very different things. Saying "if he wants to enact political change, why not start as city councillor?" Well... how many democrats or republicans are pushing for change? No one who is born and raised in party lines is pushing for reform; they're doing the op…

I think he wants to be a celebrity and he wants people to buy his book.

I think the policies he wants to push are ahead of the times ideas that resonate.

He will be as popular as those ideas are popular, and it's his "job" to make those ideas popular. So yes, by that definition he wants to be a celebrity and he wants people to buy his book.

However, if he pushes forward ideas that just don't make sense, have bad narratives or don't connect with people's sentiment, he will be quickly forgotten.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#592

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #299

spyckie2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important not to confuse the goal with the action. I don't think he wants to become a politician. He wants to enact political change. These are two very different things. Saying "if he wants to enact political change, why not start as city councillor?" Well... how many democrats or republicans are pushing for change? No one who is born and raised in party lines is pushing for reform; they're doing the op…

>Well... how many democrats or republicans are pushing for change? No one who is born and raised in party lines is pushing for reform; they're doing the opposite. This is factually not true. Both major parties have radical wings that have both seen measures of success in the last decade or so. The Republicans have had the tea party movement, and the democrats have the progressive caucus which are likely in the middle…

Admit that demeaning results of the current parties is unfair to them.

Beg to differ about comparing him to AOC. Yang's forward policies much more radical than AOC's and absolutely do not belong in the democratic party.

80% of Yang's policies is all about limiting the power of incumbency (democracy dollars, ranked choice votes, open primaries, stop DC revolving door, term limits). It hurts the party a LOT to reduce the power of incumbency; no party member with any position would actually support any of this.

Comparatively, AOC's medicare for all, public safety, housing as human right, and immigration reform is super in line with democratic party issues.

https://www.forwardparty.com/platform

https://www.ocasiocortez.com/issues

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#593

Post by bfung » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

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 wouldn't say this is unique to Andrew Yang and his campaign. I had a ex-coworker travel from California to Texas to work on Beto's campaign in 2018 and when she came back, she had the same stories of minimum wage/volunteer workers being treated with abuse and that abuse and misconducts ignored. The campaign eventually did get around to making things right, but it was too late and she had already left Texas.

Memorable quote was: Mistreatment of campaign staff is common (I think for similar reasons as artists and video game programmers often get abused? the short-term pressure and passion project nature encourage exploitation)

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#594

Post by cpursley » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #360

cpursley wrote: post #316

The use of the international communist star for the logo seems like bad optics (the people who claim Yang is a socialist will latch in the that).

A 5 pointed star is not a communist symbol, except maybe according to some communists. There are 50 of them on the US flag, as just one example.

It absolutely is, I'm living in a former communist country and these stars are still everywhere:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_star

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#595

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:37 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…

Second on doing a second take of the drama 1-3 years later. I bet you'd have some insights into politics, movements, and the nature of collective power that others don't.

> The party has to feel like the internet did: Anyone with the grit and intelligence can break through, meritocracy be damned.

just fyi - meritocracy is the ability for people with grit and intelligence to push through, I think you mean autocracy?

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#596

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

vadfa wrote: post #192

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…

"forward" means "progress" which means "left". I don't really see the point there :P I've seen many parties claim "we are not left-wing or right-wing" but they evidently have to be either.

forward in Yang's case means "anti incumbency". Not sure if that's leftist or not because incumbency is basically a mainstay of the current political system of both parties.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#597

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

ordinaryradical wrote: post #506

Loughla wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Changing the mechanics of the elections is the only way to enable a return to centrism in the US.

There is no centrism to return to. The post-WWII age of bipartisanship wasn't one of centrism, it was one where the party split didn't align with the ideological divide. It was jist as much a period of competing ideological extremes (and governing from ideological polarized positions, which is why it featured the US military being used to enforce the federal will against US state governments.)

Changing the mechanics of elections to artificially favor centrism is...opposed to the kind of changes that would expand the scope of meaningful choices and improve representation.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#598

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #208

Not exactly sure what to make of this, conceptually it just sounds like 90s era Clintonite/Thatcherite consensus with some ranked voting and other stuff thrown in. The reason why the US is polarized (and most other places to a slightly lesser degree) is because that quadrant of the political spectrum is dead[1], and people have overall grown tired of this liberal (in a broad sense of the term) anti-politics which aim…

I think Yang's painted picture of the world is to capture the disconnect between modern society's fast paced improvements and government's resistance to change.

Ironically, the fast paced improvements of modern society is because government has kept the economy and country stable, but that may soon change. Stability is needed in times of prosperity to continue prosperity. Stability in bad times is perpetuated hopelessness.

The forward party I think predicts that times ahead is not going to be prosperous for the majority, and that a slow moving government will not service the times very well.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#599

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #449

Why start a party instead of creating a caucus within an existing one? No new party has prevailed in the US in centuries, and rarely elsewhere. It doesn't seem to be a solution in the domain of problems it's trying to solve. I get the business side of politics is to represent people and their interests in the democratic process in exchange for financial support, but forking a party to do it may give you more direct a…

> Reality is, politics isn't about fixing problems, it's about winning and having your interests prevail, and becoming the people who manage and extract value from problems, not solving them.

Some people go beyond pragmatism. And pragmatism is not the only way to live, or to even feel alive. Many things have to be fought for regardless of how anti-pragmatic it is to do so and these people look like fools to others, but have their own internal compass driving them.

I think the abolitionist movement (freeing slaves in the US) is the most obvious counterexample to your quoted point.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#600

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

jiscariot wrote: post #547

I've always looked at Yang as "typical mind fallacy" in action. Coming from SV culture, he assumes if you give everyone 10k/year, we all create startups, learn violin or a second language, volunteer in their communities, etc. Policies that may work for a small, highly-motivated segment of our country do not necessarily scale.

The American spirit is giving people opportunities and seeing what they would do with them. That's American history; it's not a product SV culture at all.

Only the US has had a vast, rich land that you can expand freely into (ignoring the natives, cough) once cities, communities, and markets mature to the point where you have no more opportunities left for you. No other nation in its history has even come close to amount of opportunity that the US has always given to its people.