It doesn't really exist yet.

FAQ:

> Is the Forward Party a political party?

> The Forward Party is a PAC that plans to grow its support and then petition the FEC for recognition as a political party when we fulfill the requirements, which include operating in several states, supporting candidates, getting volunteers signed up around the country, and other party activities.

This is kind of a technicality, but I guess I deserve it for posing a rhetorical question.

My point was to criticise the "launch" for two things: (A) Launching as a single person. (B) focusing on the "if I were king" manifesto paradigm, over an actual political roadmap or theory of what the party is.

Ideally, he should be sitting alongside retired senators, serious media people & such. Multiple people who could credibly run for office. Then, what are you planning to do. A theory of the party and its politics, not just a theory of policy. Otherwise what's the difference between this and "The Office of Andrew Yang?"

The sample size of successfully established political parties in the US is small enough that the rhetorical question went over my head :)

I'm not sure we actually know what works and what doesn't.

> retired senators, serious media people & such. Multiple people who could credibly run for office.

That sounds like a recipe for more of the same. Though so does "I'm making a PAC about it!"

Though this "soft-launch" seems like more vapor than ware. I'd like to see more credibility, I'm just not sure how/when someone is supposed to bootstrap that.

Everything must have a start. He of course have supporters and media attention. All of the questions are valid, I guess. But I would not call it a missing party, just you didn't find it yet. Also, ask on Twitter and you might get a lot of responses.

True, but what you go to as a starting point is telling.

"A lot of people on Twitter like this" is a naive seeming starting point. It just seems like an extension/abstraction of Yang's candidacy. My key point is that a party is not that.

There are lots of starting points, all incomplete, that he could have chosen. Multiple, politically credible people. Another option might be organisational novelty: This is how we'll recruit & nominate candidates.

Certainly not discounting that this can't be straightened out later, just that it is not straight now. At this point it's not that different than a book tour. It's a set of policy ideas, an author making the rounds defending them, with supporters and detractors in the public or press.

Calling that a political party should be a statement of intent. What is "the party," meaning Andrew, intending?

There is no room for a third party to start gaining ground in the US. We already have a third and fourth party - the Libertarian and Green parties - that have been trying to gain traction for years. Neither has been able to. The Greens came the closest with Nader in 2000.

The reason for that is structural. The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that shuts out any attempt to gain traction by third and fourth parties.

Just think about the fact that the Federal Election Commission, the organization that oversees our elections, is legally required to be half Democrat and half Republican. That tells you everything you need to know.

If we're going to change it to make room for additional parties, we have to take over one of the existing parties with an explicit election reform agenda that removes them from the structural landscape and then restructures it (with things like ranked choice voting or a senate that works on proportional party representation) to allow for third parties to gain traction.

The problem is strategy.

Going for broke by running a presidential candidate is a surefire way to lose, and no one really donates to parties that lose. Which is a problem, because presidential campaigns cost a crapton of money; Bernie 2016 cost $220M and that was the primary.

If you look at successful third or fourth parties in FPTP nations, they are generally running lots of local campaigns, which are cheaper, give a place to train a talent pool, and also show voters proof that they can get a job done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a formal third party running for local positions near me. And in this role they can serve as kingmaker; they may never get the top job, but in a perenially razor-thin Senate margin and a currently thin House margin they could certainly lord a lot of power even with a handful of seats.

Most localities in the US are dominated by one of the major parties to the point where the primary becomes the election. That doesn't leave any room for a third party to break in either. Too many people never learn about local candidates and end up just pulling a straight ticket lever.

This is the end result of decades of gerrymandering.

I wonder if you could form a mathematical model of which districts would be most amenable to a dedicated 3rd party challenger. It seems like you'd want a district which is a "safe seat" (if there is a serious R/D contest in the district, people will want to avoid "throwing away their votes" by voting for a 3rd party). But you'd also want to identify a district where people are dissatisfied with their elected representative anyways. Ideally the elected representative is a significant distance from the median voter.

Maybe a good metric would be the ratio of primary ballots cast to general election ballots cast. If a small number of extremist primary voters are de facto selecting the candidate that will win the general and get the "safe seat", that suggests an opportunity for disruption by being a high profile 3rd party candidate who's just a bit more moderate than candidates the extremists select (more appealing to the median voter).

Another idea is to reach out to a bunch of independent candidates and try to recruit them for your new party to work towards critical mass.

Really the big issue here is not lack of ability but lack of will.

Look at the Tea Party and the DSA; they have enough motivated bases to form parties of their own, but their strategy is to co-opt and purify the existing mainstream parties. Equivalent movements in Spain decided to make their own parties and Podemos and Vox became the next two largest parties in Spanish elections.

If you run a third party that is appealing enough, you can certainly have a go at it. I just have literally never seen, I don't know, the Green Party put up a candidate for local city elections.

It's not like party establishments haven't had candidates lose despite all odds. And Independents have had good streaks at lower offices (e.g. Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg)

Depends where you are: In the recent California governor recall, there were two Green Party candidates and one Libertarian.

Governor is already a bit high-level to really have a chance at breaking through, isn't it? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?

Was responding to the idea that the Green party doesn't put up candidates for local elections... I think I've seen them on smaller races than Governor as well, but this was a recent example that came to mind easily.

Just curious, but how strong are those campaigns actually? Do they do the door-knocking, the ads, and the voter registration?

Not in my experience.

I wonder if it's seen as a necessary evil for perceived relevance. If you aren't running a presidential candidate, it feels like an admission that you're a local player without the resources to run a big, expensive campaign.

I wonder if there's anything to be learned from those weird "secondary" parties you see in some states. It will be like "Working Families Party" or whatever, with a Democratic or Republican candidate for President and few unique of down-ballot names.

I'm not sure exactly how those work. Might be just a way to use some legacy "default ballot access" In my state, a candidate supplied by any of the four largest parties would get on the ballot, even if only 15 people actually voted for the Green or Libertarian.

Perceived relevance hardly matters if you never win seats, though.

Electoral margins, particularly in downballot elections, are very very slim. For City Council of New York, which is a fairly powerful local position, you are looking at margins in the hundreds or thousands of voters, and combined with how thin legislative majorities tend to be, can form a significant wedge to wield.

> The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that shuts out any attempt to gain traction by third and fourth parties.

It's more than that: The Democratic - (and arguably the Republican party at one time) - are functionally "big tent" parties. For example, the Democratic party has a progressive faction, an "establishment" faction, and a centrist/moderate faction.

The republican party has a big tent too. There are neocons, extreme far right people, religious people, disaffected workers, anti globalists, and increasingly Hispanics and other immigrant groups.

These groups often have little in common. Just look at trumps support base.

From his podcast interview it sounds like this is a “party” like the DSA is a “party”: it throws its support behind more mainstream candidates who advance their platform (mainly ranked choice voting for now). But being independent allows them to throw support behind both Ds and Rs.

While it's true a third-party attempt is all but hopeless, Nader's campaign isn't the most successful in recent years. Gary Johnson did better in 2016 and Perot did much better in 1992 and 1996 although he wasn't running as a Libertarian or Green.

The defectors is an interesting point.

If Yang had major defectors from both parties, this might have a chance.

As it is, its just a party of one.

A political party in the USA needs an engaged, interested, reliable representative for every single county election commission, at the very least.

The Libertarians don't have that. The Greens never bothered with rural areas. The Perot believers and the Tea Parties had boots enough but no co-ordination.

The green party has such an opportunity in rural areas. I've never understood why they refuse to see any amount of trade-off. Living in a rural area for a majority of my life, I can tell you that (not to make a no-true-Scotsman argument, but) most people are very concerned about the environment. When you are constantly surrounded by reminders that the world is changing, it is impossible to refute that fact. That many still deny global warming while accepting that things are getting worse seems like bickering over semantics at this point.

Maybe they are concerned in an abstract sense, and definitely they are when it negatively impacts them. The problem is they offer little to no support for EPA, and red states have been gutting their state EPAs (or putting into place shills for mega-polluters) for decades now, because they are "bad for business".

A few years ago I was reading about an issue with the cleanup of a coal fired power plant. The power plant owners collected a cleanup surcharge for the entire life of the plant, and put it into escrow. It was supposed to be used to handle site cleanup after decommissioning. For some reason, the company was allowed to sell the site, escrow, and all liabilities to some random 1-person LLC. This person then spent all the escrow funds paying companies he owned to do none of the work properly, and now the people in the region who are dealing with the effects of this botched cleanup have no recourse. Coal retention ponds are nasty, nasty things and because they weren't properly dealt with, its leaking into the water supply.

Yes. And the common thread is, it's a problem, but only when it impacts my life. It's like there's a vague unreality in that we are all connected, and what impacts one of us will eventually impact all of us, or an unwillingness or inability to be truly empathetic.

I don't really know, to be honest.

If you look outside of the US, Green parties can develop some tension between city and country greens.

Doesn't denial of anthropogenic climate change, rather than simply being a semantic issue, undermine support for any attempt at mitigation?

I don't think so. Again, that's focused very much on semantics. If you dive in and really ask questions, outcomes are seen as the same, even if inputs are seen as different. Pollution is a problem, in their views, even if it isn't causing global warming.

The individuals (who I would note are actually very much in the minority) who steadfastly believe global warming isn't real, still identify that changes in species and/or weather patterns are happening.

It's not a stretch from there to mitigation. While they may not believe global warming exists, they do still understand that we need to make changes to our consumption, travel, and lifestyle patterns in order to ensure their children and grandchildren can have a planet worth living on.

I keep stressing global warming, because, in my experience, these individuals do not talk about climate change. They talk about global warming and how it's not a thing, even thought they identify that the weather is wetter and hotter sooner, then drier for longer periods of the year.

Thank you for the thoughtful explanation. Do you have any explanation for why these folks pretty reliably choose representation that pledges to relax environmental protections? Is it possible that they are concerned about the environment, but not concerned enough to matter at any practical level (e.g. given their expressed actions)?

Money, and a lack of understanding of the tragedy of the commons. That's the pure and simple of it.

I need to be able to exploit [resource a] to be able to feed my family. For example, take fertilizing a field or crop. So it runs off into the water. Well, that has never been a problem on my farm. I don't have algae blooms and my pond is fine. They don't seem to understand that they are just one small part of the larger picture of all of the nitrogen and phosphorous flowing into streams, rivers, lakes, etc. Source: The Obama era watershed protections that everyone was up in arms about.

They are very willing to express their concerns in their own backyard. Whether that is fostering native species, eliminating invasive species, or even adjusting farming/other practices to ensure the sustainability of their own soil. It just falls apart when it translates into policy across the board.

I feel like it's a lack of common definitions and something basic, but I don't really get it, to be honest.

I think this somewhat misses that pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are different issues with distinct (sometimes opposed) mitigations.

Pollution, like runoff and smog can be _much_ more locally tangible, both in the "i can see that we're putting something into the air/water that wasn't there before" sense and the "I can see the damage this is causing relatively directly". Greenhouse gas emissions is much more ephemeral, since things like carbon dioxide are natural parts of the atmosphere and are released to some extent by natural processes, and they only have a tangible effect on a global scale and over long time-spans.

I don't think it misses that point at all, unless I misunderstood you. I think it actually absolutely exemplifies what you wrote.

They identify that something is happening, but do not know what to attribute it to. Concrete steps that can be taken are in your immediate proximity. You can see the immediate effects of pollution, therefore you can try to fix that. You may not be able to see the immediate effects of greenhouse gasses or climate change, therefore it is not a problem.

It's the same as pollution not really being a problem until it impacts you, in particular. The same (I would argue confusing) attitude, I think.

I don't think it's that deterministic.

Facing a behemoth like the two parties head-on is impossible. You can't have as much coverage as them as a starting point. OTOH, you also don't have to stay in their paradigm or split your efforts so widely. OTOH, elect three senators or nine mayors would, in itself, represent a major victory and real political power.

"This means that we will support Republicans, Democrats, and Independents - as well as candidates identifying themselves as Forward Party members."

It's not a party. It's more of a organization to fund politicians who align with their "core values".

Since everything is politicized, the perceived stakes are so high that social / legacy media would not allow something like this to get going.

Take a look at Unity 2020, an effort to recruit a third party for the presidential run. It was banned on Twitter immediately upon creation. No explanation was given (they're a private platform).

Hopefully it'll die down a little bit now that we may have more traditional candidates on both sides, but I don't know because there are just as contentious issues today.

Everything is view from a lens of agenda. When decisions are made, they're made in the context of "what would this mean for [x]?". For instance, if a story, no matter how newsworthy, could lead to lower vaccination rates, it is more likely to be buried. And when you have organizations filled with people that believe certain ideas or politicians would literally end human existence, the stakes couldn't be higher. Any effort that could be seen as helping the wrong side is dead on arrival.

https://medium.com/arc-digital/unity-2020-a-tragicomedy-ac01...

He would do better running as a Libertarian IMO. There's been support for UBI within the LP for a while, the party simply lacks candidates with a compelling story.

In 2016 though, if the people who voted Green Party would have voted LP the LP would have earned 5% (instead it earn 3.5%) of the popular vote granting it full federal funding through the entire next election cycle.

It's the closest any third party has come to being validated in decades. During the 2020 cycle, both candidates were duds unfortunately and it showed in the voting.

If he's planning on endorsing candidates in other parties, that's probably an option.

OTOH, why take on all that baggage when it doesn't come with any votes? Probably makes more sense to recruit former LP and Green figures to run under the new banner.

You think it’s going to be easier to start a new party vs one that’s had growing support for over a decade and aligns with many of his values?

You mean this political party here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcllE7fx8-I

That.... doesn't look like a party that's planning to appeal to centrists.

This might be a controversial take but candidates for the Libertarian party should be libertarians. If Yang wanted to run under an existing third party then the Green Party would make more sense.

Just looking through his points on the website, here's what's actively supported by the LP...

- UBI

- Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries

- Term Limits

----- These are widely supported within the LP

- Working with government should be painless

----- For LP this means because there should be less federal power, leading to less of a feeling that it's trying to control your life

- Legislating based on outcomes, not ideologies

----- I doubt anyone in the LP would be opposed to this stance as the fact that opposition to ideologies which make little sense from either major party is a driving force of the LP itself.

- Grace and Tolerance

----- A party who wants to let everyone live their lives without government interference with a comical tag line of "I want gay married people to protect their marijuana plants with guns" would seem to be the epitome of giving each other the benefit of the doubt. A cornerstone of freedom is the belief in trusting people to make their own decisions.

- Human Centered Capitalism

----- I'm not entirely sure what this means and it's not elaborated on within the platform.

From the actual Platform page, a couple of others...

- Automatic Tax Filing so simplify the tax process

----- This has been a LONG time Libertarian Party rallying cry.

Yang may be trying to get attention by creating a new party, but he's so closely aligned with the Libertarian Party here it's crazy.

No wonder Yang got nowhere. This list isn't really a list of policies at all, it's a set of vague truisms that hardly anyone would disagree with but which can't be obviously turned into any sort of implementation.

And what sort of libertarian party supports UBI?! How would that ever be implemented without massive levels of top-down coercion and taxation? No analysis I've ever seen says it can be self-funding as was once claimed. If that's really their position then no wonder they don't accrue any influence.

UBI as a means of eliminating and consolidating most other government welfare programs under a single umbrella. It would eliminate a ton of federal agencies and bloat in the process.

Additionally, having it conditionally tied to overall government spending so that excess spending cuts into UBI would ensure that every American at any level has a reason to combat new government spending and inflation.

It seems there is a divide between libertarians who support liberty and libertarians who would like government to be even deeper in the pockets of billionaires.