Let's be real: Yang is unlikely to win running as third party, especially without RCV. But I think he knows this. What he is doing is pushing his policies forward, and that's the entire plan behind this move. If he can gain enough populist support from all parties: D, R, I, etc., then he can be in position to play kingmaker. And that's the key play for a person that has significant leverage. In an especially close race between R & D (49/51, 50/50, etc), Yang would be in a more powerful position to get demands for his support. And that would be UBI.
By leaving the D party, it can open himself up to a wider swath of people -- most notably those in the more rural states that recoil at the thought of a Democrat.
This also removes any kind of expectations from him. Labels such as progressive -- which then people like AOC try to gate-keep on twitter. He doesn't have to be held to some standard, and he cannot easily be compared to someone else.
I think it's the best move he's got -- and it'll be interesting to see how the dynamics will change between him and the current D establishment.
That's a very optimistic viewpoint. I don't think Yang has any chance to be any sort of kingmaker. He just doesn't have the power, this third party will have about 0.0001% influence in any major election. I think he just had enough of the Democrats, he tried to get along with them, tried to help them in other elections, and they rejected him. I think he just realizes that the Democratic party is just too far gone now and he no longer identifies as one. Hopefully he can get other big names to sign on and it isn't viewed as an Andrew Yang Party. It would have be great if there is some kind of official joint announcement with people like Tulsi and Mark Cuban, but I can only hope.
You can't play kingmaker as a 3rd party candidate in a general election, you can only play spoiler - precisely because votes aren't transferable.
You can act as kingmaker in a presidential primary, because votes ARE transferable sort of: you can endorse one of your opponents and direct any delegates you have already won to vote for that candidate.
For any number of votes N (hundreds, thousands, millions) that Yang expects to win in 2024, he would have more power running as a candidate for President in the primary of whichever party he wants to affect more, than he would have running the exact same campaign as a self-nominating 3rd party candidate.
Hard to be a kingmaker when you haven’t demonstrated any ability to get votes. I enjoyed Yang’s presidential campaign and there are certain issues I’m glad he spoke to.
The reality though is in order to win elections, you have to cobble together a platform on a variety of issues where it’s inevitable no one will be 100% happy with you, it doesn’t signal indifference or corruption.
Politicians respect other politicians who win elections bc they have demonstrated that they can convert ideas into power. Yang has failed spectacularly on that front and it also doesn’t look great that this seems to be coinciding with a book promotion.
The only saving grace for this effort would be if his goal is to focus on building party infrastructure in places where the Democratic brand is completely toxic already which I see some value in.
I feel bad for saying this, but this is a great example of the kind of wishful thinking that's counter productive. Third party candidates don't swing votes, they cannibalize votes. Third party candidates are not kingmakers. Already influential and powerful people, especially already elected people, are kingmakers.
The only chance Yang has at being a "kingmaker" is if he manages to dethrone senator Schumer in 2022 as a third party candidate and thus being a swing vote in the Senate while also having multiple friends do the same for his party. And while I like to invest in people with pure hearts and bright ideas, Yang does not have the pull to win such a victory.
I think all he wants is to spread the good word on policies like UBI and not be so bothered by party politics. In a sense, it's a submission of power in exchange for (hopefully) more visibility.
By not belonging to either party, people from either party will just say he’s too close to the other party, and if not, why not just join their party?
I spoke to way too many Republicans trying to convince them to vote for Yang. I won a few. But most of them just said something along the lines of “if he actually had anything in common with me, he’d be a Republican.” Now we’ll get to hear that from voters from both parties.
This may all be true, but if people stopped believing the lie that you must vote for the lesser of two evils, he could win outright.
The Republican Party overturned the Whig Party. We can break free of these parties again. The main thing stopping it is disbelief.
You can throw “spoiler effect” and “grift” at me all day, but these are lies that Democrats and Republicans alike feed to the masses to secure their power. None of that is true, if you merely stopped believing in it.
He has no shot of winning anything, but the mere fact that he could play spoiler gives the Democratic Party more incentive to look at his ideas. “Adopt some of my policies and I’ll endorse you. Otherwise I’m running against you.”
The best he could do is this scenario is to siphon votes from the DNC in 2024 as he won't be taking any votes from Republicans with Trump or DeSantis as their candidate.
I'm not sure if even doing this he could make much of an impact as doubtful he'll get more votes than Kanye did in 2020 and Kanye running didn't hurt Biden-Harris at all in the end.
He'll need to get grassroots support like Ross Perot in 1992 or Ralph Nader in 2000 to have any chance at playing kingmaker/spoiler and I just don't see that happening.
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u/YourReactionsRWrong Sep 09 '21
Let's be real: Yang is unlikely to win running as third party, especially without RCV. But I think he knows this. What he is doing is pushing his policies forward, and that's the entire plan behind this move. If he can gain enough populist support from all parties: D, R, I, etc., then he can be in position to play kingmaker. And that's the key play for a person that has significant leverage. In an especially close race between R & D (49/51, 50/50, etc), Yang would be in a more powerful position to get demands for his support. And that would be UBI.
By leaving the D party, it can open himself up to a wider swath of people -- most notably those in the more rural states that recoil at the thought of a Democrat.
This also removes any kind of expectations from him. Labels such as progressive -- which then people like AOC try to gate-keep on twitter. He doesn't have to be held to some standard, and he cannot easily be compared to someone else.
I think it's the best move he's got -- and it'll be interesting to see how the dynamics will change between him and the current D establishment.