Andrew Yang speaks on Dan Osborn, the Forward Party, and Problems with the Two-Party System
Businessman and attorney Andrew Yang, who ran unsuccessfully for President in 2020 and then for Mayor of New York City in 2021, came to Omaha on Tuesday to talk about the "Forward Party" and his plan to challenge the two-party system.
Yang spoke to the Free Speech Society and outlined the problems he sees in Washington DC, including politicians who are more interested in courting donors and getting reelected than solving problems and listening to constituents. And while he didn't have a particularly detailed platform for his newly-created party, its agenda was a seemingly populist one.
"The Forward party has a very clear vision: we just want our government to answer to all the people of the country," Yang said. "So, what is it that most people want? We should get that. And we're not getting that."
Uprising of Displaced Workers
Yang's entry into politics started in 2016, when Donald Trump's victory took him by surprise, and he wanted to investigate how it happened.
"I'm a data nerd, and what I found was that there was a straight line up and to the right between the elimination of manufacturing jobs in a voting district and the movement towards Trump in that district," Yang said. "Over the last generation or so, we eliminated 4 million manufacturing jobs. And where were those jobs based? Midwest primarily. It was Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio. … Those are the Midwestern states that Trump won in 2016."
Yang sees the development of A.I. as a potential threat to future jobs in call centers, clerical and administration, food services, and manufacturing. "I thought the truckers were endangered, but it's actually a bunch of white collar workers. And designers, even coders, that are having their jobs replaced by A.I." Yang also believes the current two-party system is incapable of offering a solution.
Nebraska Senate Race
In addition to having steak at The Drover and ice cream at Coneflower while in Omaha, Yang also came to campaign for Dan Osborn. Osborn is a nominally Independent candidate for US Senate, who Yang believes would be a breakthrough for those outside the two-party system.
"Dan Osborne is a U.S. Navy vet, patriot, mechanic, someone that most of Nebraskans see and think, 'Oh, I know who this guy is.' [But] if he had a D next to his name, he'd be totally uncompetitive."
Yang also took multiple swipes at incumbent Deb Fischer, who he described as a "rubber stamp, nondescript, corporate Republican."
"What are Deb Fischer's incentives? Money, job security, do what the party boss tells her to do. That's it," Yang said, "Dan Osborn's incentives are to actually come back to you in a number of years and say, 'Hey, how did I do?' And if he did not do well, you will vote him out of office."
Democrat conformity and careerism
Yang had criticism for the Democratic Party as well, specifically their abandonment of the nomination process in 2024. Yang had backed primary challenger Dean Phillips in January, who he believed was "trying to upgrade the nominee, because he thought that Joe Biden was going to lose to Trump, which objectively, he was going to."
"There was this conformity and careerism, and I’m going to say even cowardice, that accompanied them covering for Joe for all of that time," Yang said, "and deciding that destroying someone like Dean Phillips was preferable to having an honest conversation about who the nominee should be. … If Kamala loses in three weeks, I think a lot of it will be because they did not have an honest process."
Moving Forward?
Yang spoke at length both parties' refusal to deal with hot-button issues like abortion and illegal immigration, preferring to leave problems unsolved so they could be used as campaign issues.
I had the chance to ask Yang about what I saw as the biggest problem politicians are afraid to touch — out-of-control federal debt created by structural issues with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Yang didn't have a simple solution. He proposed adjusting the income threshold on social security benefits for wealthy individuals and introducing a value-added tax. He also suggested the possibility of finding a way to tax A.I.
"If you were smart, you would set up a tax on cloud computing — that's just a proxy for A.I.," Yang said. "Then you could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue, and the victims would be the biggest tech companies who, by the way, are doing just fine."
In addition to Dan Osborn, Yang is also campaigning for Nick Batter, who is running for the Nebraska state legislature in LD13. Co-chairs of the Forward Party include co-chairs include former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts Kerry Healey.