To get into Yang, I feel most people have pretty mixed views on him, where there’s always an issue people think he makes a good point on and always an issue he makes a bad one on.
Ran in 2020 for president as a democrat and in a lot of ways had a unique campaign.
First DNC candidate to make universal basic income a major campaign part.
Pro school choice
Pro nuclear power
And actually took some pretty controversial takes over what most in the left want, like saying minimum wage increases don’t work for economic growth.
This makes him on surface seem a bit more right leaning, but had points which alienated him in that base.
Wanted to end offshore drilling.
Was pretty anti gun.
Wants a carbon tax
Supported higher taxes
Pretty tough on tech companies.
Not really the best guy for the left or right, but clearly found a base of people behind him.
Writing that, it sort of makes sense why he’d try and launch a new party.
The left is too extreme on certain things and links policies with growing these departments/agencies, where Yang wants to just give people cash.
The right is too socially conservative, denies climate change, anti immigrant and might be too extreme on entitlement reform.
Yang has a good mix where I could see a national fit.
But here’s why I just feel this idea is dumb.
Sore loser syndrome
Traditionally, most candidates to run independent or third party have been people to run Republican or Democrat, not do well in the primaries and seek going third party.
It tends to make bad press and Yang having poorly performed twice in a DNC primary, it fits with that.
Ran in 2020 and raised 31 million dollars, but only hit 2-3% in the Iowa/New Hampshire primaries before dropping out.
Ran in 2021 for mayor of NYC and started out as the primary leader, but ended the primary a distant fourth place.
It didn’t work. This party feels less like a goal for change and more of a point that it didn’t work.
Third parties just don’t win.
I’m going to use 2018 as an example of this on the state level.
In 2018, three notable races happened with libertarians trying to win and actually raised a significant amount of money, but all went bust.
Gary Johnson who was the former governor of New Mexico and ran for US senate against Democrat incumbent Martin Heinrich as a libertarian.
Polls showed he had the highest name ID in the race.
Began out raising the Republican quickly.
Got into all debates, had ads and was full on candidate.
Results hold at 15.8%, which put him under half of what the Republican nominee was and Martin Heinrich was declared the winner of the race the morning of the Election Day. They didn’t even have to wait for the votes to officially get counted.
Next was Laura Ebke, who was a state senator in Nebraska and incumbent.
Which switched registrations from Republican to Libertarian two years prior. For her race, it was a non partisan election, meaning nobody would see what party a person was in. On top of that, it was a jungle primary, where she won the first round and it was a one on one with her and a republican on the election.
She outraised that opponent 2 to 1, but lost 57/43.
Final example is New York’s 2018 gubernatorial race, where Larry Sharpe who was a veteran ran libertarian and former Syracuse mayor Stephanie Miner ran independent trying to form a new party.
Larry raised about $500,000.
Stephanie raised $700,000.
I voted for Miner, but both flopped with Larry getting 1.8% and Miner getting about 1.2%.
The Republican nominee, Marc Molinaro, had only 1.2 million raised, but got about 40% of the vote.
Two candidates that ran third party raised what a republican nominee raised, but couldn’t combined get 10% of the votes he got.
This is sort of a telling model, where when a former governor, an incumbent local leader and two candidates with $500,000+ each all fail badly, there’s an issue.
The worst people show up
History lesson and that’s that 2016 wasn’t Donald Trump’s first time running for president.
He ran in 2000 briefly on the Reform Party, which was an offshoot of Ross Perot’s independent 1992 campaign, which got 19% of the vote and formally formed a party in 1996, when he ran again and got 8%.
Trump ran on advice of Jesse Ventura, who was governor of Minnesota at the time and had some quiet support from Angus King, who was governor of Maine and now a US senator. Both won as indepedents linked with the reform party.
Trump began campaigning and was nationally polling over 10%, while just in exploratory status.
Problem though was he apparently hated the party and found them nuts.
The people attached…
David Duke the racist
Pat Buchanan the racist which got to say he worked for Nixon.
Jesse Ventura, who was still ultimately a conspiracy theorist nut.
Donald Trump who we all know is a bit off, looked at this and called it a joke.
Forming third parties have the issue that there’s always a nutcase who wants a mic, which signs up to join and there’s so few members, they may get it.
Final thoughts on this.
I think Yang is a smart guy and there’s demographic wise, a logical reason for why his ideas would make sense as a third party.
The problem though is there’s just a bad history for third parties and every piece of data, from either numbers or history show it’s a hard battle.
I am upset he did leave the DNC though and I think it should be a reflection for problems in that party/movement though.
Yang running for mayor was asked his favorite subway station in NYC and he said Times Square. The journalist asking him came from a more left wing group and yelled at him for that answer.
The most visited train stop in the world that manages to be virtually crime and litter free being put as an answer was somehow offensive.
Another issue he had was Israel, where he was pretty haunted by his own team for voicing Israeli support.
I think the left just showed how for Yang and his more Silicon Valley progressive ideals, they just blocked out a growing voter base which would have been easy to obtain.
That said, the third party idea is still dumb.