Comments by "" (@thehumanity0) on "Jim Acosta grills Andrew Yang on new political party" video.

Yang continually talks about "the 10% of extremes in both parties", yet he himself only has a following today because he literally ran on arguably the most "extreme" issue in the 2020 election ie Universal Basic Income. Also he only just recently abandoned it and dropped it from the Forward Party platform.
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Yep, he pretty much does that for all the questions and you can tell he's playing politics way too much. This is completely different from the Yang we saw in 2020. And what he's doing ideologically now has already been done before, it's called Third Way politics, ie what the Clintons and Tony Blair did for decades and is essentially the brand of neoliberal politics that has caused such chaos and divisiveness today. If you believe in nothing, the people will reflexively dislike you, in other words, exactly what happened to Hillary Clinton.
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@Crista Ferrari-Girault Yes and do you know which side of that spectrum agrees with the European systems? If Europe was apart of America, they would 100% be considered in that "extreme far Left" that Yang likes to wag his finger over. The American system is so skewed to the Right, no other 1st world country compares. Does your country have Universal Healthcare? Because that's what Yang is referring to when he talks about "the 10% extreme" of the Left. In European countries like the UK or Spain, the Conservative parties in those countries supports their single payer or other forms of universal healthcare systems. In this country, our Conservative Party literally calls Universal Healthcare communism, they call subsidized housing and government financed universities and trade schools communism or socialism. If they get any whiff of a social safety net to help people under the poverty line or the 500,000 homeless in America, they start screaming about Socialism and Communism. You shouldn't compare America to European countries without being fully aware of just how absurd our political spectrum is. Saying things are "moving Forward" might sound good, but politics is about the POLICY and unfortunately the Forward Party has no ideology or policy, if you listen to Yang for more than 2 minutes, he all but admits that and can't even tell you if his Party supports things like universal healthcare or not. All he can tell you for a fact is that his party will take corporate donations and PAC money. I don't know what country you're from, but this type of "centrist" politics has already been done for decades, it's called Third Way politics and it's most notable advocates were Tony Blair in the UK and the Clintons in America. And even if he is serious about the party pushing ranked-choice voting, taking corporate PAC money and accepting money from corporations is an action that will corrupt the party and is contradictory to ranked-choice voting. You can see right here how Jim Acosta and mainstream media are diametrically opposed to giving other third parties more power, and even IF the Forward Party gains more power, well now you have another party that is corrupted by big business and the revolving door in US politics. Congrats, you've just created a 2nd Democratic Party run by a centrist do-nothing ideology that the current Democratic Party already believes in.
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@lydialutz Except the entire point of politics IS the POLICY. You can't change the system without implementing a political platform and an ideology that goes with it. Take this to its most extreme logical conclusion: you're going to have a party that has no limits to its political ideals or political affiliations, so in theory you could have a politician that is borderline or a complete fascist with a politician who is a communist who openly believes in Marxism and you think those people or groups within the same party are going to caucus together and agree on anything whatsoever? That's just naive and childish. It would make far more sense to create a party that looks at every poll on the issues (NOT with the politicians, but with the American people) and then have the party create their platform based on every issue that has majority or above 60% support among the American people. The problem with that though is that Yang would then need to take a firm stance on issues like Marijuana Legalization (60% support of Recreational, 91% support for Medical) or universal healthcare (63% - 70% support of adult Americans), but unfortunately what Yang is doing is including those issues in his smooth brain interpretations of "the extreme far Left" and "the 10% extremes that run both parties". His idea of "centrism" and "forward" is to find the median between both shitty corrupt parties despite the fact that neither support the issues that the majority of Americans support. Also, his decision to allow the Forward Party to take corporate money and PAC money is so damn bad I'm not sure why anyone still supports it, considering corporate PAC money and the participation in the revolving door of politics is the core reason why the system is so corrupt in the first place. If you don't reject the corruption, you're just going to make a 2nd Democratic Party or a 2nd Republican Party corrupted by their own hubris and greed.
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This is categorically untrue. The Democratic and Republican parties only reward lobbyists and the crony corporate structure that owns them. If the "extremes are being rewarded", then why is Universal Healthcare not a thing and why is Donald Trump being raided by the FBI? What a bunch of nonsense and delusion.
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Not even. He's just going down the direction of Third Way politics, ie the same thing the Clintons and Tony Blair governed with for decades. Maybe even a bit of Mitt Romney too and Obama's useless Affordable Care Act.
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@Crista Ferrari-Girault What is a "moderate" in your estimation then? Because Yang describes it as agreeing with the majority of American people, yet the majority of Americans agree on things like Universal Healthcare or legalized Marijuana, things that Yang has also described as being in "the 10% of extreme on the Left". Look at the polls and you'll understand for yourself. He says he wants to find the median between the Democrats and Republicans extremes, which is honestly just the Clinton-era style Third Way neoliberal politics that has dominated the Democratic Party for the last 30 years. There is no self-awareness here and it's childish to think you can just find the middle between Republicans and Democrats while also taking no concrete stances and just assuming it's where the majority of Americans agree on issues.
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@Crista Ferrari-Girault Again, you say "radicalizing both sides", and yet one side is calling for universal healthcare (something you conveniently likely already have in your country), while the other side wants to privatize all healthcare so it's entirely unaffordable to anyone below the poverty line. One "radical" side wants to end America's wars and drone strike program, the other wants to invade Iran, re-invade Afghanistan, ramp up the drone program even more, and do a coup of Venezuela and Cuba. One "radical" side wants tuition-free universities and trade schools, the other side wants to end the public school system entirely and divert funds to private charter schools. One side respects religious tolerance and wants to continue the separation of Church and State, while the most radical factions of the Right are admitted Christian Nationalists and ultimately want a Christian theocracy and what would likely amount to "Bible Law". Most recently, the American Left wants to keep Roe v Wade in effect and allow women freedom over their own bodies within the first trimester of pregnancy, while the other side wants to ban it completely upon the moment of conception and force all states to comply in addition to banning same-sex marriage and banning even contraception. You should actually learn about both sides before you just wildly accuse both sides of being equally "radicalized" when one side is simply just calling for basic shit the rest of the 1st world already has including countries in Europe. I've supported a third party for over a decade: the Green Party, but that's because I know what they believe in, including ranked-choice voting, unlike Yang's party which is bringing in far right goons from the Reagan, Bush and Trump administrations in core leadership roles within the Party. Pair that with how they're already stating they will take corporate PAC money and they're already a lost cause. Doesn't matter if they support ranked choice voting or not, their corporate donors and lobbyists will never allow it to realistically see the light of day - that's how American politics works.
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Acosta sucks like the rest of the media, but Yang did an awful job here. He can't even say what the party is for or against and the party even dropped UBI from their platform. Not to mention the person he mentions as a Forward Party candidate is an ex-CIA agent deep state goon.
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@lydialutz While basically believing nothing themselves and having no real ideology or platform. Yang even dropped UBI, it's an absolute mess
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You should support a third party that actually has ideological beliefs, not one that can't even answer a simple yes or no question on things like marijuana legalization or healthcare reform.
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@user-bp3ou2dq2q In my opinion, it should be calculated by how far away your positions are from the majority view and opinions of the average American and where the people stand on the issues. If 65% of the American people believe Marijuana should be legal recreationally and 91% believe Marijuana should be legal medicinally ie the vast majority of Americans want legal cannabis, then a politician or political group that takes a position of Marijuana usage or minor possession being a felony offense with potential penalty of jail time, imo that person is an extremist on that issue specifically, because they strongly disagree with ~90% of the American public on the legality of cannabis. If you go issue by issue and look at the aggregate data and polling average by Americans on the policy positions, it shows that the Republican and Democratic Parties are both out-of-step with the American people on most issues. With the Democrats, they claim to support some of the popular issues, but their voting records as a whole don't reflect that, same thing with Republicans on specific issues. This is most evident when you have direct ballot measures, like in the last Florida election, when Ron DeSantis was elected as governor, who doesn't support a higher minimum wage, but the state voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 on a direct ballot initiative and it won by 60%. The same scenario can be applied to numerous Democratic politicians and the overall party as well. This is why considering "the center between the Democrats and Republicans" as the "moderate" position is fundamentally flawed and the popular position among Americans is actually advocated by those "10% of extremes" on the Left such as marijuana legalization and universal healthcare for instance and even sometimes by the Right such as public opinion regarding "the deep state" ie the CIA, FBI and NSA, organizations that are officially supported by the "moderates" in both Parties yet have extremely low trust and confidence by the American people. In other words, choosing the median/center view between both shitty parties is still going to be out-of-touch from the positions and views of the average Americans & the American people.
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@user-bp3ou2dq2q The United States is the center for worldwide kleptocracy. The fact the US is a representative Democracy definitely doesn't help the situation (ie politicians are elected to vote on the policy directly, very rarely are the people able to vote on the policy themselves) since it makes Democratic rule much less open and direct. However, the real factor that's causing a deterioration of American politics and the people's trust in Congress (currently at a 12% approval), is it's becoming impossible to ignore the massive amount of corruption that goes on in Washington. Lobbyists and the revolving door of politics has created what Donald Trump would refer to as "The Swamp", and though Trump is a self-serving narcissist & delusional in countless ways, he's not wrong about his initial 2016 criticisms of Washington politics. There are no term limits on Congress and many of the same corrupt goons are passed around different administrations and unelected positions, so these people just become numb and used to the corruption over time. In many instances, it's completely legal as well since these are the people who write the laws. It's a massive problem in both Parties & one of the things they have in common. Bipartisanship in Washington is usually never a good thing, because more than likely, it's on an issue where both parties agree on the corruption. Just as an example, there was a bipartisan bill about 4 years ago that had an 11% approval rating among the public - it basically stated that corporations could sell your personal information and without even asking you or informing people - this bill was easily passed through Congress and the Senate because it had overwhelmingly bipartisan support with a few Democrats voting against it. The reason this happened, is because both parties are massive recipients of corporate money from tech companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. Yang is correct when he states that the 2 party system is part of the problem, but he always tends to overlook what many consider the core problem in US politics, the corruption and onslaught of corporate power.
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I have been a long time supporter of 3rd Parties, but Yang's party is seriously just a confusing mess. The guy dropped UBI from the platform despite it being his bread and butter issue and now he's putting forward candidates that are ex-CIA agent deep state goons. Wtf happened to this guy?
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