Ah. Didn’t get to that other topic.
If there are only two parties, then the US politics would essentially stay the same. One party for progressive values and changing the status quo, and the other trying to time travel back to the 1950s. The names of the parties might change, but without actually giving the majority of the voters the proportional amount of representation, the current voting system would only encourage more and more extreme candidates.
Since Andrew was a proponent of ranked-choice voting in his presidential bid, I think he knows exactly what he is getting into. He might still bring change to shift what voters would consider as viable policies, but essentially forms the party more for the money rather than actually getting elected.
Voting power rests in the primaries. That’s where he needs to fly a candidate or two.
So, I’m at least glad his new movement is about changing the current voting system. However, he really refrained from mentioning his position on ranked choice voting in his presidential bid back in 2020. It was too bad because that’s the place where such message could have reached the most people.
Andrew mentions we need a non-partisan, and as a result bi-partisan effort to reform the country’s voting system. It absolutely will not go that way. There is no incentive for party members to weaken the parties’ hold on power.
From what I observed, the only way to get any law that would change the status quo passed is to have a charasmatic leader, such as Obama or Trump, who ran on the issue and winning presidency, working with a majority congress to get it through early in their first term.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong and we’d have at least 6 major parties by 2030. Although I don’t even see that happening in Taiwan, let alone the US.
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I see he did an interview in on Tucker Carlson.
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Did he ever mention it previously? It featured in the NYC mayor Dem primary. That may have got him thinking about it more.
Good talk! Liking what I hear.
And the machine leaps into action!
This actually sounds like an improvement (not sarcasm).
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He did mention ranked choice voting early on in his presidential campaign when he was going to all those long form podcasts to get more attention. In those podcasts, it sounded like reforming the election system was probably the second most important issue he was running on. Those podcasts were also what helped him gain grassroots support and propelled him to televised debates.
However, once Yang actually got to the televised debates, he absolutely didn’t even mentioned ranked choice voting once.
So he definitely talked about ranked-choice voting before the NYC election. Perhaps even help inspire the change in direction.
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In this interview Yang said we’ve basically observed that we have the money for UBI through the last 2 COVID relieves.
Back in 2019, Yang used to think the problem was not enough people know about UBI and once people learned about it the government would push it forward, but now, he realized that the entire political system is no longer responsive to what the majority of the people demands. That’s why he believes an election reform would have to come before anything gets done.
That’s good and all, but pushing for election reform is equally if not more difficult than for the UBI. Yang said he would first push for ranked choice voting to be adopted in the primaries.
I get it that each state basically decides how the primary is held, and it is easier to get the message across and mobilize enough people in each individual states, and he probably feels that he would better reach supporters of both major parties if he champions ranked choice voting from the outside.
I hope he is right.
I’m reading Sowell’s 1995 book:
I fear a lot of conservatives will see that the UBI is simply an further expanded War on Poverty, started in the 60s, which not only saw an increase in the numbers of people below the poverty line, abut also an increase in dependency on the government.
So, yeah. 
The priority of Yang’s movement is to get the public to push for ranked choice voting so that the elections result will reflect the majority of the voters, and allow pluralism back into US politics.
I think he did a well enough job to raise awareness of UBI that he basically doesn’t have to try to sell it anymore.
I doubt he’s THAT known this far out of NYC and the 2020 election.
The reason why I say he won’t have to sell UBI is because even if Yang isn’t well known, the public is already familiar with the UBI as a concept, and those who are interested in it is already pushing it forward, if only at a state level instead of a federal one like Yang was hoping to achieve.
IDK, I think people know about it, but have no idea how it works. I read Yang’s book and have a slightly better understanding, but I couldn’t explain it to you.
I have been a proponent of UBI…forever and think it’s probably the easiest policy prescription to take care of a wide variety of problems. However, the events of the past two years have solidified my belief that not only would Congress not be able to implement it but they would screw it up beyond belief.
I disagree with perhaps 40% of Yang’s ideas but like that he’s trying to think things through enough that I donated to his campaigns several times. I firmly believe that the DNC will try to destroy him if his ideas take hold and he has a trust issue for anybody right of far-left considering that he dropped from the primaries when the DNC snapped their fingers, endorsed Biden then went to work for CNN.
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The numbers may be up a bit, but the poverty rate is close to half what it was.
Or, you know, he dropped after he didn’t win any delegates in Iowa or New Hampshire, the states with the best shot for the little guys.
Then why the need for an expansion of services?