Business and entrepreneur Andrew Yang made waves during the 2020 Democratic Primary with his universal basic income plan to send every American a one-thousand dollar monthly check. Yang garnered a lot of enthusiastic supporters during the 2020 presidential campaign and seemed to be gathering a lot of steam, but bowed out in February of 2020 after losing the New Hampshire primary.
Since that time, Yang has continued to amass a vocal following and made a strong but ultimately unsuccessfully primary run for New York City Mayor in early 2021.
Now, Yang finds himself more and more at odds with partisan politics and has decided to jettison the Democracy Party label and blaze a new independent path outside of politics as usual:
Former presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is set to launch a third party next month, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Yang is expected to start the party in conjunction with the Oct. 5 release of his new book, “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.”
It’s not clear what the name of Yang’s third party will be or how he plans to deploy it in 2022 or 2024. Yang and his team did not respond to requests for comment.
As of today, Yang has officially ended his relationship with the Democratic Party and will consider himself an independent moving forward:
Andrew Yang announced on Monday that he changed his voter registration from “Democrat” to “Independent,” calling the move a “strangely emotional experience.”
What he’s saying: While Yang said he has identified as a Democrat for years and has “dozens of friends and confidantes who are entrenched in the Democratic Party,” he is “confident that no longer being a Democrat is the right thing.”
“My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day — but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever,” Yang said.
He said he has always been at odds with the Democratic Party: “I’m not very ideological. I’m practical. Making partisan arguments — particularly expressing what I often see as performative sentiment — is sometimes uncomfortable for me.”
For his faults of appearing out of touch, perhaps unavoidable as a multi-millionaire, Yang seems to be well in touch with some of the blaring problems facing the country in terms of increased political polarization. As the extremes drift further away, driven by progressive politics creeping into everyday life, the way forward and governing a country this large and diverse becomes harder and harder.
Yang’s move may be idealistic, and better suited to an identity outside of politics, but at least he’s willing to set his politics aside and recognize how far the Democratic Party has drifted sharply left since the days of old. Yang is also trying to sell a book, so trying to appeal to more right-leaning readers by no longer calling yourself a Democrat can’t hurt either.
As a candidate, Yang raised a massive amount of money during the 2020 presidential campaign. He figured out to leverage the online “money bomb” craze and racked in big headlines and lots of dollar figures, but was unable to translate that into votes by persuading more to join his cause.
Ultimately Yang proved too independent-minded for the 2020 Democratic Primary which was a battle of left-wing causes and woke political slogans. Yang, a pragmatist who championed “MATH” as his best campaign slogan, was not ideological enough for many Democratic Party voters.
It will be worthwhile to see where Yang goes from here, but wherever it is, it will be most likely be as a private citizen working to mend political fences from outside the system rather than inside it. Third party presidential runs don’t usually translate well into actual votes, so it’s unlikely we’ll see him in 2024 don’t he national stage, but the prospect can’t entirely be ruled out.
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