Andrew Yang should listen to his critics. Take it from me, a former statewide field director of a centrist third party. We targeted state legislative seats in a high education, single party state, and we still failed. This was because third parties have an insurmountable time maintaining ballot access due to existing laws designed by the two major parties. Absent ranked choice voting or open primaries, their candidates will serve as spoilers in multi candidate races. His press release cites a majority of voters identifying as independents as a strength, but as we found out, these voters are independent because they do not want to join a party, especially a new one with difficulty attracting donors, recruiting candidates, and staying on the ballot. At least in our case the risk to democracy that one our candidates might help a Republican get elected to an overwhelmingly Democratic state house was negligible. In the case of Yang’s party, they will only help Jan 6th enabling Republicans stay in power and reward Trump for his criminal actions with another term in the White House. The stakes for our democracy are too high to experiment with an unknown party at a time when we need all hands on deck to defeat anti-democracy Republicans.
I admired Andrew Yang’s campaigns and message and share many of his criticisms of the Democratic Party. Yet Yang already had a strong base in the Democratic Party and he and his former Republican allies should have worked within it moving it back to the center while pushing for reforms like ranked choice voting, non-partisan redistricting, and open primaries that make our democracy more competitive. Working with folks like my friend Liam Kerr in the Welcome Party, he could help target anti-democracy Republicans in competitive districts with dynamic Democrats committed to social progress and economic innovation. He could work for Third Way which is brainstorming innovative policies to fight inflation.At a time when countless rights are at risk and the results of free and fair elections are violently contested, we cannot afford to further divide the pro-democracy movement. Another failed third party will only move us backward, not forward.
I agree.
It needs to be said — perhaps in a different post — that the Democratic Party should not be funding primary campaigns of fascist right-wing bigots.
There are multiple reports (cf https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/27/meijer-dccc-trump-primaries-00048104) that the DCCC is funding the primary campaign of a MAGA crazy in hopes of unseating one of the few GOP House members who voted for impeachment (Peter Meijer, R-MI).
This is both cynical and extremely dangerous.
Democratic Party craziness like this builds momentum for Mr. Yang and the ill-timed third party movement he has joined.
Paul Waldman has a good counterpoint that nobody is making these Republicans vote for these extremists, but it could backfire on us especially in the PA governors race. It does seem that MD and IL should be slam dunks and the MI and MA GOP have self owned sufficiently to keep and flip the governorships there.
That said, I agree Peter is an honorable Republican and does not deserve this treatment. Especially since it’s very unlikely a Democrat wins that seat which has been a Republican one since the days when Gerald Ford represented it.