Andrew Yang promotes Forward Party at Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle

By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

I didn’t actually imagine I was going to be president of the United States,” — Andrew Yang

There is an expression, “of the people,” used when someone does not put themselves above others, and even more applicable when that someone comes from ordinary or difficult circumstances. It never applies to someone who was raised with a silver spoon in his or her mouth. No matter how much they try to tell you they are “of the people,” they are not. Immigrant leaders—that is, people of color whose families came to the United States within the past one to three generations—are the new “of the people.” Andrew Yang is “of the people.”

Yang spoke to Seattleites on May 6 as part of the finale of the Crosscut Ideas Festival 2023. He came to shine more light on his idea for a new political party, which he calls the Forward Party. There’s a lot of confusion as to what that means, but what it doesn’t mean, according to Yang, is a party that sits in the middle of Democrats and Republicans, ideologically. It might or might not, depending on the candidate. The Forward Party will welcome a large range for participation.

“The game that they’re playing with us is they slice us up along the ideological spectrum and say, ‘You should hate those people, don’t work with them’…I will work with you,” whereas Yang “will work with just about anyone who wants to try to make it so that we can have a genuine say in what the heck we’re getting in our communities.”

As Yang described, right now, we have no say. Yang never expected to be president when he ran in 2020, and in spite of reports to the contrary, he insisted during this presentation that he has no plans to run in 2024. He ran in 2020 to bring visibility to the fact that the current two-party system is broken—for regular people—but works great for the top 10%.

“I didn’t actually imagine I was going to be president of the United States because I’m not crazy,” Yang joked, but with a large grain of truth. “My mission was to try to educate people of the fact that we’re going through this profound economic transformation, what some experts are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Trump was a manifestation of that in 2016 and then that curve is going to speed up with the onset of AI and other things. I ran for president to mainstream solutions, and the main solution I championed was universal basic income (UBI).” Yang pointed out that approval for UBI went up during the pandemic to 65%.

“I daresay if that curve had been a little faster, I might actually be your president today.”

When he came off the campaign for president, Yang felt good about representing but bad about the system that has regular people set up to fail. He started Humanity Forward, and then the Forward Party, as a way to address this. He cited a couple of states that have already implemented a non-two-party system in their elections: Alaska and Nevada.

“There is a real life solution that is concrete and proven, and it comes from the great state of Alaska,” which, in 2020, “voted to get rid of their party primaries, and replaced it with an all-party primary with ranked choice voting.” This means that top candidates by vote move forward, period, no matter their party or the zoning of their county. In this way, regular people might win.

Yang, who repeatedly described himself as a “practical” person raised by immigrants, a person who worked in a Chinese restaurant growing up, someone, in other words “of the people,” spent a great deal of the presentation demonstrating how popular opinion has almost nil to do with political results, that nothing changes at the top because everyone in power is forced to toe the party line, and that our elections are essentially “non-competitive.”

Andrew Yang (right) talks with moderator M. David Lee III at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle on May 6. (Photo by Kai Curry)

“You have a one-party system here in Seattle,” he blatantly stated. We might not be “pumped,” he said, about what’s happening in Seattle or who we have on the ballot, but it doesn’t matter because we have “no agency.” For now, anyway, “the Democrats have that stuff wrapped up…and any time there’s a seat that opens up, what is the only question? Who’s next in line? You have a system that’s just churning through people while it fails us over and over again.” And when it fails, “they’ll point to the folks on the other side of the aisle and say, it’s their fault.”

The enemy isn’t each other, Yang insisted. It’s not people who live in red or blue areas. We’ve been set up to face off against each other when in fact, everyone is just as frustrated, depressed, and desperate.

“The only enemy is a system that is going to tear us all apart.”

Yang came up with the Forward Party to stop this vicious cycle. Without change in our political set up, there will be no change anywhere else, either. He quoted Al Gore, “Democracy reform has to precede addressing climate change,” and upped it a notch: “You could put anything into the place of climate change and you’re probably right.”

It only takes a few people to make debate possible within our current system. A few representatives. A few senators.

“We’re trying to bring this temperature down…so that you can agree to disagree,” Yang said. It only takes a small percentage of Americans to join the Forward Party “to accomplish that vision…let’s come to the table.”

Yang explained that the Forward Party will be aiming first for city-, county-, and state-level elections—not presidential. He wants to engage “those who feel excluded, minorities, people living in poverty.” The movement will grow from the ground up, and will not be based on pre-set controls. People with less than 50% of public approval will not be 100% guaranteed to keep their jobs—as often happens now in Congress.

“We’re the chill out party,” he joked, but still with that grain of truth. “We’re like the ‘let’s get stuff done and stop yelling at each other’ party.’”

The audience was strangely quiet. While folk music played outside in the Amazon Meeting Center hallways, the famously left-wing, rabble-rousing Seattle audience was muted. Maybe because the Crosscut staff had informed us that this was being taped. Or maybe because we’re having a harder time echoing Yang’s enthusiasm than we did the first time. But his boyish everyman charm was catching and attendees started to warm up, by small degrees. Afterwards, a woman brought an armful of memorabilia from Yang’s presidential campaign for him to sign—and even had him hold her baby. Yang was right there. He had descended from the platform so quickly to shake hands and mingle, it took a second to realize he was there with us; then eagerly—and trustingly—he went outside into the main hallways to do the same. One of us. “Of the people.”

About 40 people attended a cocktail honoring Andrew Yang at Cyclops in downtown after his Crosscut talk. the event was organized by JJ McKay. (Photo by Assunta Ng)