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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Back with us now for the first time since the New York City mayoral primary is Andrew Yang. After running for mayor and running for president as a Democrat, Andrew is launching a new third party that he's calling the Forward Party. He also has a new book in conjunction with this announcement called Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy. Andrew, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Andrew Yang: It's great to be back Brian. You are one of my favorite people to talk to. Ever since the first presidential campaign, you're a voice of reason and truth.

Brian: That's very kind. I see you just changed your registration on Monday from Democrat to Independent. Tell us why.

Andrew: I've been a Democrat for 26 years. I'm doing this because I think that right now, the number one problem that's holding us back is the polarization in our country. You can see it, you can feel it. It's keeping us from getting anything done. It's getting worse and worse. What I lay out in my new book is that, unfortunately, all of our incentives are right now toward polarization.

Whether it's our politicians' incentives to be more ideological or media, yourself exempted, Brian, because you're always reasonable. But our media unfortunately is more and more partisan and polarizing, and then social media pours gasoline on the whole thing. If you project forward and say, okay, how's this going to work out?

It's going to work out calamitously. We can all see that. We're heading towards catastrophe. My goal with The Forward Party is to change the incentives and provide a unifying, positive, popular path toward a democracy that actually rewards the reasonable and diminishes the extremes and extremism.

Brian: You wrote that it was always something of an odd fit between you and the Democratic party. What part of it most didn't fit you?

Andrew: What's fun, Brian, is I always thought I was very, very democratic until I started running for office. [laughs] What I thought was just facts and figures, which is the way I approached the world. When I was politicking out there, there were certain people who really like facts and figures, and then certain people who didn't seem to to respond to them the way I respond to them.

I think that there's a need for a solutions oriented movement that just hears something and says, okay, what can we actually do to fix that? Right now, so much of our politics is around, unfortunately, like a back and forth around casting another group as the enemy or the problem.

Brian: Do you have a false equivalency problem here? Some Democrats might say that splitting off a wing of voters from it who are drawn by you and your message, just empowers the Republicans who are the real threat to our democracy, with lies about rigged elections and things like that.

Andrew: Clearly that's a concern that's born of this binary dynamic that we have. While I'm much more aligned and sympathetic to these concerns in this time, the problem really is that our system is set up unfortunately to be fragile and polarizing. If you look at other countries around the world, the UK has 5 parties, Sweden has 8 parties, Netherlands has 18 parties.

One of the things this does is insulate you from authoritarianists corruption of a particular party, because if you have seven parties and one of them starts having problems, then it's a problem, but it's not like an existential problem. Our current system is something that would have been essentially a waking nightmare for our founding fathers because they would never have tried to set up a system that is this corruptible really. Our concern should be making our democracy more resilient, and one way to do that is by having a more vibrant multi-party system.

Brian: Are you concerned though about starting a spoiler party that, for example, could help Trump or someone like him, get elected again in 2024?

Andrew: Right now, Independents outnumber the Democrats or Republicans by the numbers. 57% of Americans say they want some kind of alternative because they sense that the duopoly is not working, but there are a lot of assumptions baked into that, Brian. Number one, our focus is the 2022 elections that are going to be local. We're going to be running ballot initiatives. People always jump straight to a national race because that's the way we're conditioned.

The other thing is that the numbers actually show that Republicans and Independents crave a third party more than Democrats. If you look at my support, even on the presidential when I was running as a Democrat, nearly half of my supporters said they weren't sure they're going to support the Democratic nominee. You could make as powerful and compelling a case that I'd helped the Democrats than I hurt them, by the numbers.

Brian: You call in your book, and you just referred to it, for open primaries, which some states have, but many states don't. In other words, you like it when you don't have to be a registered Democrat to run in a Democratic primary or registered Republican to run in a Republican primary. Why do you think that's good?

Andrew: Right now, 83% of the congressional districts in our country are safe seats. They're going to be Democratic or Republican, and so the general election is an afterthought. To think about how it would be to be a minority party member and Independent in that environment, you just ignore politics because it's like, well, nothing I do is going to matter.

If you had an open primary, even if your point of view isn't the dominant point of view, it's going to get much more of a fair hearing. That is something that we should encourage. Democrats ought to be about people being able to participate in our system, and closed party primaries fly in the face of that.

Brian: If a political party represents certain values, let's say, or certain groups of constituents, why shouldn't a political primary be the nominated candidate who's actually from the group?

Andrew: What this actually means in practice, Brian, where you have 83% of our representatives beholden to the most extreme 10 or 20% on either side, and then you wonder why there's so much dysfunction and polarization. It's because the incentives are set up that way. If I'm a Republican and I say a bad word about Trump, it's not that I have to go to all voters in that district. I have to go to the 10 to 20% most extreme Republicans in that district, and so I won't say a bad word about Trump.

You can see what happens when you change the process, where the only senator who's a Republican is up for re-election that voted to impeach Donald Trump was Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. She now has a 6% approval rating among Alaskans and Republicans, thus demonstrating why no one else is willing to do it, but Alaska recently adopted open primaries and ranked-choice voting, and so now Senator Murkowski can take her case directly to all Alaskans. I'm going to suggest that actually helped make her judgment more independent.

Isn't that what we would want for our country? Wouldn't that take the temperature down several notches? That's what the Forward Party is about. It's about unlocking our leaders from these perverse incentives that push them toward the extremes.

Brian: Following that idea, should we do away with political parties altogether then, and just have people run as individuals?

Andrew: There's part of me that loves that idea, but in practice, if you have 435 legislators, you need some kind of organizing groups. If you're going to have parties of some kind in my mind, you'd want more than two. [laughs] You'd want to make it so that different coalitions have to get together with each other, you'd see more get done. Right now, you have this really toxic dynamic that is unfortunately only projected to get worse.

Brian: Listeners, Andrew Yang is here. We can take phone calls for him. 646-435-7280, on his new book called Forward or his new political party called Forward.

Andrew Yang: I'm easy that way. Same names,

Brian: 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Let's see about some--

Andrew: One thing I just want to make clear really quickly, Brian, is you can be a registered Democrat or Republican or Independent, and subscribe to the Forward Party's reform principles. You don't need to change your party registration. We're very practical.

Brian: Well, are there central policy ideas the party starts with? You are most well known for your $1,000 a month universal basic income proposal to combat chronic unemployment from automation that [unintelligible 00:09:17] and the presidential primaries on. Is it that plus a few other central policy proposals?

Andrew: Number one is open primaries and rank choice voting, which I think is vital to unlock our legislators from these perverse incentives that make them more extreme and make it so that we're going to destroy each other. Let's be realistic, that's where we're heading. Number two is universal basic income, to your question, Brian, because I still believe that we need a way to get economic resources into people's hands during this time.

Fact-based governance is number 3. Modern and effective government is number 4. Number 5, I think people will appreciate, is grace and tolerance. Is that we don't villainize or demonize anyone, we love our fellow Americans, and we think that this is exactly what many people are feeling right now that we're missing.

Brian: Grace and tolerance. It sounds so good, and then if a Democrat hears that today, I'm projecting, but I'm thinking how people may react to that. They may think, "Well, grace and tolerance toward the other side, when the other side these days is science-denying and making stuff up like rigged elections and supporting authoritarianism. Then why grace and tolerance toward the other side?"

Andrew: Again, I think we're falling prey to imagining that you have tens of millions of people that subscribe to the most extreme beliefs or views. The way to build common ground is to have conversations with people of different backgrounds and beliefs, and then if you disagree, there are some things you can agree to disagree on. Other things are fundamental and you have to say, "Look, I really disagree on that."

I think one of the traps Americans are falling victim to is really seeing other people as parts of enemy tribes rather than just human beings, neighbors, community members, and that's been a relatively recent change. You and I are old enough, Brian, to remember a time when it was not like this. We need to get back to first principles.

Brian: Noumena in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Andrew Yang. Hello, Noumena.

Noumena: Hi, Brian, good morning. Happy belated birthday, I wish you more and more and more. My question to Mr. Yang is, is he bitter because he did not win? Because I know Democrats are divided right now and the whole country is divided anyway, but you got to try so that you can bring- work hard so you can try to bring the party together for the sake of the party and the people, so that we don't get another Donald Trump. My question is, is he bitter because he did not win? He's angry? I will put the phone down and I would listen for my answer. Thank you, Brian, you have a blessed day. You are a star.

Brian: You are too nice, Noumena.

Andrew: He's a star, that's true.

Brian: Thank you very much. Andrew, to her question.

Andrew: Of course. Well, first, I hope I certainly don't sound bitter or angry, but the other thing is it takes a year to write a book. You know what I mean? [laughs] I wrote this book last year and became committed to this vision for the country. It's not possible that I could have run for mayor, lost, and then turned around and written a book in July. No, this is something that I became passionate about really throughout the last number of months. I'm just trying to do everything I can to help, whether that's run for office or start a popular movement that can hopefully bring the country back together, that's welcoming to all.

Brian: Well, on your mayoral primary run, you do endorse in the book the idea of ranked-choice voting along with open primaries as your central organizing principles. Did your experience of actual ranked-choice voting, which was the system in the mayoral primary, reinforce your support for that?

Andrew: I love ranked-choice voting. 77% of New Yorkers want to do it again, and I'm going to suggest anything that four out of five New Yorkers agree on is pretty awesome. I think most people remember, I campaigned with Kathryn Garcia because I saw her as my second choice and I wanted everyone to know that and I think that's something that ranked-choice voting enables. I will say that ranked-choice voting is even more powerful when it's not within the context of a party primary, as it was here in New York, but could be used across all parties, because then different points of view would come to the table.

Brian: What about that cross-endorsing of Kathryn Garcia at the end? Many people were confused by that. She still had a chance to win when you apparently did not. I think you said that that was part of the thinking. But cross-endorsing her, even though she didn't cross-endorse you, and it looked like you were doing that specifically to stop Eric Adams who was in the lead, who I think you weren't even that far from ideologically. What were you trying to do there?

Andrew: You have your own judgment that builds up, Brian. I liked Kathryn. I thought she was a great public servant and had the right goals. If you feel that way, then you tell your supporters that that's how you feel.

Brian: Justice in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Andrew Yang. Hello, Justice.

Justice: Hi, Brian. Hi, Andrew. I wanted to know what your thoughts on the Green Party is and why you wouldn't support Howie Hawkins because I certainly continue to support, campaign, and vote for the real Howie Hawkins Green new deal with an economic bill of rights and immediate halt to, and ban on fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure.

Andrew: Thank you for the question. I'm a big fan of the Green Party and many or most are-- [laughs] I haven't looked at the platform so there might be something I don't like in there, but big fan of the Green Party. I think what we should be fighting for is a system where different parties can participate more meaningfully. That's what I'd love to see. I think anyone who is for a party that's not one of the two major parties, should be looking hard at the mechanics as to why it's next to impossible for a lot of those points of view to make it past a certain point locally and even nationally. That's what I'm about, is to try and make it so that different parties can emerge. As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of there being four or five, six, seven major parties, and I think the Green Party be one of them.

Brian: Well, universal basic income is generally seen as a socialist thing. Tell me if you would reject that word, but that's one reason progressive's got interested in you for a while. Government redistribution of cash to set the floor that would reduce poverty, but I assume you don't align yourself with not only everything the Green Party stands for, but as a perfect fit with the Democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party, like Bernie Sanders or AOC. Why not, if universal basic income is your signature idea?

Andrew: I think we referenced it a little bit earlier, Brian. I just want to help. I just want to solve problems. I want to make people's lives better. I think cash in people's hands would be a fantastic way to do that. I think there are different ways to do that, but I do think trying to segment us all into ideological buckets is one of the traps that's being laid. There are Americans who are attracted to different solutions that maybe, unfortunately, have fallen victim to the same trap, where now they're being told in the media, it's like, "Hey, those people are good, those people are bad." That's just not the way I think and that's not the way I think a lot of people think.

Brian: With this orientation, and you referenced earlier, you're interested in facts, seems like not everybody in the party when you were running in the primary is interested in facts. Will this orientation make you what they call a technocrat? Michael Bloomberg had that reputation. His heart's in the right place, just wants to be good for society, but it's all about technical fixes. The criticism of him, partly, was not enough connection to groups of constituents and what they feel and want, like a political party fosters. His solutions were sometimes seen as out of touch and sometimes didn't work, like massive stop and frisk to reduce gun violence. Are you a technocrat and do you embrace that label?

Andrew: This is an interesting question. I am someone who really likes data and information and if something seems like it's going to be helpful, then I'm into it. If that is what you're describing, then I certainly think I might resemble it.

Brian: Cortez in Freehold, you're on WNYC with Andrew Yang. Hi, Cortez.

Cortez: Hey, how are you?

Andrew: Hi, Cortez.

Cortez: Hey, how are you, Andrew? My question and a quick comment is I think one of the biggest problems in America is the backlash of colonialism and also the racism that exists in this country and you were speaking about the extreme sides. I often think that sometimes you need extreme measures to tackle extremists in this country. How do you plan to tackle racism and the backlash of colonialism in this country?

Andrew: Thanks, Cortez. Universal basic income or versions of it, were not my idea at all. One of the biggest champions of them was Dr. King. Martin Luther King was talking about a guaranteed income or a universal basic income for all Americans right before he was assassinated. To me, if you look at the way that we can improve on racism, it's by trying to make people's lives better, and I'm going to suggest that would help everyone. That would help people who are right now subject to racism. I even think that might change the climate in a way that would make people more generous, positive, optimistic, universalist, and less prone to toxic beliefs like racism.

Brian: Dan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Dan, you're on with Andrew Yang.

Dan: Hi. I'm just not really hearing like an actual ideological difference between what Mr. Yang is proposing and basically, like you said before, that technocratic wing of the Democratic Party. It sounds like you're trying to fuse the ascendant right wing populism on a cultural level, with some progressive ideas to offend as few people as possible, but we need political solutions not technical solutions. I support UBI but that can't be in place of real social safety nets and if we're just going to continue on the capitalist path of destruction then it's not going to make a difference anyway. In short, we need real political solutions and vision, not technocratic gap filling. Thank you.

Andrew: Thank you. I'm very sympathetic to this perspective, but what I'm going to suggest is that right now our system is set up to fail us, and that if you had a group of passionate Americans after a certain point of view, which you have on many issues, I think even the ones you're describing, and that they take that political movement, it will completely flounder and run aground of the system as it's currently designed. We should expect that to be the case because of the way our incentives are set up. When you talk about it being technocratic and not being impactful, I'm actually going to suggest the opposite, is that we can see right over and over again that there are waves of policies. I'm going to call one out that's very relevant to us right now: letting the government negotiate lower drug prices.

I think something like 80% of Americans agree with that, so problem solved, right? No, and then why not? It's because of our system of incentives that ended up tying various legislators interests not to what most of us think, but to what either an extreme flank thinks, or what various corporate interests think, and that's why we're all being driven crazy. What you might see as like that's just a process change, the process actually is what's making it not work. If you want it to work you have to change the incentives, and then when you get a group of people excited about something, maybe our legislators would actually reflect that as opposed to right now reflecting something else.

Brian: Since you raised that issue, what do you think these days, as a newly minted ex-Democrat, about the current stalemate on the Physical Infrastructure Bill and the Human Infrastructure Bill in Congress. The sort of Joe Manchin versus AOC arc of the party debate. To over simplify it, we have one of the Democratic members from our listening area, Congresswoman Rice from Long Island, holding up one of the provisions in one of those bills, which is specifically Medicare getting the ability to negotiate price with pharmaceutical companies.

That's seen as her moderate position, while the progressives want something else. I'm curious if you see this whole conversation that the party is having in Congress now as dysfunctional, or a big tent party working through toward big tent solutions, or does it do within the Democratic Party what you're hoping to do by starting a new party. Which is, yes, there are different factions that represent different ideas and here they are and they have to negotiate with each other to get something done.

Andrew: I think a lot of people right now are on the verge of crushing sadness, where many people, myself included, campaigned for various Democrats around the country and then now it seems like there's an opportunity to do big things and we're not able to deliver. If Democrats aren't able to deliver we can expect the pendulum to swing pretty forcefully the other direction and so this seems like a no brainer. I think that's what a lot of people are feeling, but again, it's a symptom of the system and we're running out of time.

There are only a few choices here really. It's that we stay in this dysfunctional doom loop and wonder why it's all disintegrating, or we actually try and figure out like why is this not working, and it's not working because it's set up not to work. That's what we have to get to fixing as quickly as possible. I'm very sensitive to the fact that democracy itself is in question and we need to make the system genuinely more vibrant, resilient, and in keeping with-- and I know some people might look at this in a different way, but this is the waking nightmare of our founding fathers. They woke up and said. "Wait a minute, you have two parties? What?" [laughs] They were anti-factionalism. If you were to have factions, they wanted a lot of them, and we're seeing what happens when the opposite is true.

Brian: You also get in parliamentary systems, we've seen it in other countries, these situations where a small extreme party has a lot of leverage. Much too much leverage, when the larger parties are close in parliament and that can reward extremism. Are you worried about that?

Andrew: Right now you're seeing it play out in these Senate conversations where you have two senators that have all of the clout. I know that the goal should not to be just so distinctly polarized where we get stuck in this way, and also by the way make the system much more resilient and resistant to authoritarianism, because then if you have one party succumb to bad leadership, it's not an existential threat. It's a problem just for that one party.

Brian: Who do you think your constituency is likely to be? I'm thinking of examples in the past where people try to run against polarization and form third parties or consider it, like the Ross Perot example, or what some people might call the John McCain/Joe Lieberman party.

The centrist Democrat and the centrist Republican, who almost ran for president together. They were trying to build a constituency around the country for that kind of thing. I think that what happened in both of those cases is that most of the people who supported those efforts were older white people. Why wouldn't that happen in this case?

Andrew: The dysfunction is worse than ever. The polarization is making us insane, we can all tell, and Gallup recently found that 62% of Americans are looking for a third party alternative, the highest level they've ever seen. If you have that level of interest, then there's a ton of potential, but the mechanics aren't there and so what you have to try and do is change the mechanics. You can change the mechanics on the grounds of just things working better.

You can change it on the grounds of making us, again, more resistant to authoritarianism. We don't have unlimited time and if you think about that group of, let's say, frustrated Independents, by the numbers that group probably outnumbers either Democrats or Republicans in this country.

Brian: Last thing. You wrote in the book about the experience of running for president being like every day is your birthday and why that's bad for democracy. Would you articulate that?

Andrew: It's nuts and I compared it to reality TV show. You have makeup on, you're surrounded by people telling you what to do a lot, even though they work for you. I say in the book that it makes the appearance of leadership your job and so it actually makes you into a really crummy leader. [laughs] Like an actual crummy leader because you're essentially playing a leader all the time on TV. It's discouraging the right people from running. It's discouraging the right people from winning, and it's making the people who do win into lesser versions of themselves.

I don't think this is good for our democracy at all. One of the things that I'm for as a result is term limits, because I think that you're likely to end up a little bit more out of touch over time, so we might as well get some new people in, particularly in a country where we are a gerontocracy now. I think that is also causing certain problems that could be remedied just by having reasonable term limits.

Brian: Although I think much of the analysis of why you led the mayoral primary polls at the beginning but faded at the end, was that you had the most fame going in, the most name recognition, but when registered Democrats got to see your policy ideas, they didn't like them as much as some of the other candidates. Do you think that's wrong?

Andrew: That's as reasonable explanation as I've heard. [laughs] It's something where you could take the fact that a well-known person-- and keep in mind that I was not well-known three or four years ago. I was just an anonymous dad walking the streets. I think that fame certainly has its effect on people. I feel fortunate that to the extent I'm well-known. I was like a middle-aged dude where I think I'm pretty much who I'm going to be. [chuckles] I can see how it would mess people up and get worse over time and it's something we should take very seriously.

Brian: Andrew Yang has started a third political party. Of course, there are many others but we call any party that's not the Democrats or the Republicans a third party.

Andrew: That's one of the problems. It's true. That's true, but this is really, this is the real third party and anyone can join. That's like the magic of it.

Brian: That's why you should wear a button that says [unintelligible 00:30:36] so we get third parties accurately named someday. He also has a new book in conjunction with this announcement called Forward: Notes on the Future of our Democracy.

There are some book events coming up depending on where you are. There's one tonight in Washington DC at the loft at City Winery. There are some others also coming up in other cities. The New York one already happened, but around the country, you can find the details at andrewyang.com. Andrew, thanks so much for making us one of your stops. We appreciate it.

Andrew: Thank you, Brian. Great talking to you as always.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Kevin Young next. Stay with us.

 

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