Yeah.

Welcome to the Aaron Harber show.

My special guest today is former presidential candidate and co-chair of the Forward Party, Andrew Yang.

Andrew thanks so much for joining me.

It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me Oh, it's my pleasure, my honor.

So tell me a little bit about yourself, because I think a lot of people I know you ran for president got a lot of exposure, but there's still a lot of people who like to hear is still a man of mystery.

No.

All the time.

Well, what do you want to know?

I feel like I'm a pretty normal guy as far as it goes.

All right.

High tech entrepreneur.

Is that a fair description?

You know, I will say, even that' a bit of an oversimplification.

I ran an education company that used technology that was bought by a bigger company.

And then I started an entrepreneurship nonprofit that worked with lots and lots of tech companies.

But I'm a little bit more old school as, an operator of a small private business.

Obviously, the presidential campaign put you on the national stage.

Let me ask yo a couple questions about that.

First of all, what did you learn from that experience?

Unfortunately, I learned about how our political system really isn't designed to respond to what we want or deliver good policy, which is not what we're trying to change with the forward party.

But I met thousands and thousands of Americans around the country, and people are much, much, more gracious and welcoming if you actually sit down with them in person, as you probably found out, you probably interview all sorts of people where you expect them to be terrible.

I'm not kidding.

But most of them are nice.

There have been a few.

There have been a few exceptions.

Well, yeah, that's actually a pretty good way to describe America.

It's like most people are pretty nice, with a few exceptions.

What surprised you the most?

What surprised me the most was the disconnect between the reality on the ground and what we're seeing in the media.

It's one reason I appreciate your approach and context.

Because, our, our media organizations now are separating us into teams and tribes.

And unfortunately, now their business models are based on that.

Where they notice if you if they present you something that, might be a little bit challenging, then you change the channel and they're like, oh, I can't do that again.

So that's so when you g to people in person, reasonable, welcoming, want the same things for themselves and their families.

And then you turn on cable news or you flip on, Twitter, then it's, funhouse of mirrors.

Really?

So when it comes to, you know, you you have the opportunity to see the election process at the highest level from the inside.

Yep.

Tell me two things.

One is, I mean, I want you to talk about what you think needs to be changed.

Well, let's start with that.

Then I want to tal about the forward party as well.

What needs to be changed and why?

Well, this is what needs to change here, and I'm so glad you asked.

So here's what most Americans think.

Kind of or been told.

We have elected representatives who need to make 51% of us happy, and we have a two party system, and those two parties are competing.

It turns out that most of that is not true.

For 90% of us, what do I mean?

The approval rating for U Congress as we're here together, having this conversation.

What do you think it is?

I'd be surprised if it's over 20%.

That's right.

It's 20%.

What's the reelection rate fo incumbent members of Congress?

I would be surprised if it's below 95%.

Yeah.

Well, you're, a very well informed man.

So it's it's 94%.

We're going to make a commercial out of your statement.

Thank you.

Oh.

Sure thing.

Aaron Harber while in for him.

So, so think about those two numbers.

20% approval, 94% reelection rate.

And imagine if you were in a business and 4 to 5 of your customers were unhappy and you did nothing.

That's what most Americans fee like in terms of our politics.

And so then when you dig in, you say, how the heck can these numbers be so different?

It's because 90% of our congressional districts are drawn to be either very blue or very red.

If you get to the general, you win.

The only way you can lose your job is to get primaried from within your own party.

Which means that instead of making 51% of us happy, it's trying to keep the 10 to 12% most extreme ideological voter off your back to keep your job.

So that's happening, in both parties.

And that's why legislators who might represent a relatively down the middle district sometimes are anything but in office.

So that disconnect is driving a wedge in American life.

And and media organizations are making it worse.

And social media is making it worse still.

So that's why we feel so polarized, broken, dysfunctional.

So and just to be clear, in terms of, you know, how you describe how things are functioning, your key point is that right now, if you're in a blue district, heavily blue or heavily re district, whoever is nominated for an office is going to win the general election.

Yes.

And so the real battles at the primary level, the people who tend to vote, you have two two issues at the primary level.

One is the people who tend to vote tend to be the most extreme or at least disproportionately the most extreme members of each party, dominate primaries.

And what makes it even worse?

Not that many people vote.

Yeah, in primaries, 10% or so.

Yeah.

And in a lot of places.

So this fiction that we have, these two parties warring with each other, it's true in a very, very small fraction of the country.

75% of the country actually lives in a state or area where one party runs all three branches of government and runs everything.

And so you have a system where there's very littl genuine dynamism or competition.

And that's why so many of us feel like, wait, something's amiss and it's not working.

And then when we turn on the TV, we're told, you know why you're unhappy?

Those people over there.

You know, it's like that.

That they're your enemy.

And really, what's our enemy is the system that is diluting any form of popular will through this, system that makes things very out of whack.

So you reference something you can go into.

But, it's interesting.

When you were on the campaign trail, as you talked to thousands of people and you, you were really referencing the commonality, the fact whether you're a Republican, a Democrat or anything else.

I mean, most people want pretty much the same things as they do.

What do they want?

What do most American people want?

Well, I'm a parent.

I've got two boys who are ten and seven.

One of them's in public school.

And we all want our kids to grow up in safe, positive environments.

We want them to feel like they have a brighter future than maybe even we've experienced.

We want, an environmen where we can express ourselves and not be attacked or, demonized or villainized.

We want to feel safe.

So there are all these thing that are pretty much universal.

What happens, though, is we get coded for conflict.

Where I'll give you an example.

If I sit with a farmer in Iowa and I say, look, do you think that, prescription drugs are too expensive?

I say, heck yes.

Like, would you like us to try and make them cheaper, includin through regulation?

Heck, yes.

How do you feel about socialized medicine?

Hate it.

You know, and, like, why the the, sharp reaction is because they've been coded to think, well, socialism equals bad, equals left, etc., etc.. And so we're again getting segmented into these populations for the good of the parties in power.

We're going to spend some something like $10 billion in the next cycle beating each other up.

And then you wonder why we're seeing families and friendships torn apar by this Partizan back and forth.

By the way, that same farmer maybe getting agricultural subsidies, maybe participating in a government crop insurance program and maybe on Medicare.

Yeah.

And that's the key.

Now, Aaron, is that you imagine people are voting based upon, benefits.

Or what I'm getting but really, they're voting along political affiliation and tribe.

The tribalism in the country is going up and up.

And our goal with Forward Party is to bring it down a notch and emphasize the common ground, realign our elections so that we actually do have this world where our leaders have to make 51% of us happy, instead of just that 10% on one extreme or the other.

So let's talk about the forward party.

When.

When did the concept come together?

What's your role?

Who else is involved?

Well, I'll give you a little bit more of a background.

So I showed up on the national scene as a Democrati presidential candidate in 2020, and I was running on the fact that our economy was transforming in fundamental ways.

It had already eliminated 4 million manufacturing jobs in the Midwestern swing states that, in my view, led to Trump winning those states.

And now I was going to come online.

It's going to eliminate call center jobs, a lot of information processing jobs, which, by the way, are some of the most common jobs in the economy.

Retail job also are going to get decimated.

So I ran for president to say, look, we're going through this profound transformation, and we need to humanize our economy in various ways.

And if people remember me as saying, we should just start giving people $1,000 a month, because that would help universal basic income.

Yes.

Now, at the end of my campaign, I had objectively overachieved, but I still felt despondent about the direction of American politics, in part because our leaders with their 94% reelection rate, have no actual incentive to reach forward and try and solve for AI or climate change or poverty or immigration.

You know, a U.S. senator actually said to me, an issue is worth more to us, unaddressed than addressed at this point, because if I don't do anything, I can get you mad, I can get votes, I can keep my job, I do something then my job security goes down because I probably worked with the enem and I was ideologically impure.

And so you can put problem after problem in that frame.

So I concluded that our design is actually going to keep us from solving the biggest problems of this time.

What it is going to give u is inflammation, polarization, and strife.

And you need to change that design.

Now, you can't do it from within the two party system for what I see as obvious reasons.

Because if you were to say within one party, hey, let's do this and that, the other party would dismiss you entirely.

If you showed up in a red state, then they'd say, well, you're clearly a dem trying to, you know, mess with us.

And then, vice versa.

So it had to be from outside of the two party system.

And one of our taglines on the presidential was, it' not left or right, it's forward, which is where I wanted to to, bring the country.

And so the party, I just I heard that and I just got that direction for the first time, so.

Oh.

Good stuff.

Forward party.

Not left or right, but forward party.com.

So, you needed something from outside of this blue red left right conflict.

So we started the forward party, and now I'm the co-chair, my fellow co-chair is former new Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman.

She was also EPA secretary under George W Bush.

So she's, an environmentalist.

It's just she's a principled, a great public servant.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Heale just joined the national board.

Christine Oversell, who co-founded the rock band Nirvana just joined the national board.

So we have a very diverse group of leaders, who want good things for the American people and don't think that the two party system is the way to get there.

So there are a lot of other parties.

I mean, you know, when I think of, you know the American Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and all of them have, you know, seem to have struggled.

And there are many parties, third parties that have come and gone.

So, what do you think is going to be different about the forward party number one?

And, and for a party to sustain itself in this era, I mean, it certainly needs resources.

It needs people.

Give me a sense of how you're tackling those those issues.

Yeah.

So the, the game that the powers that be would like to play.

First of all, the two party system is enforced by a state by state regime of rules.

And so you're totally correct, Aaron, that if I show up and say, hey, I'm gonna start a new party, not easy.

A lot of resources.

It's not starting one organization.

It's essentially starting 51 organizations, one in each state and then a national.

Now, I'm happy to say that the Forward party is already the third biggest party in the country by resources, though there is a very steep drop off between 2 and 3.

But w have a lot of wind at our backs because 49% of Americans now say they're independents.

Two thirds want a new political alternative, 74% think the country's on the wrong track and democracy is not working.

So in that context, if you come along and say, hey guys, let's do something different, let's try and get above and beyond this left right tit for tat that we know is leading us nowhere.

A lot of Americans look up and say, wait a minute, that's actually exactly what I want.

And you know who just joined?

Ford is the mayor of Fort Collins, Colorado, here, in the state.

Her name is Jenny Arndt.

She's an amazing public servant.

She was a state rep for years and years.

And she has also come to the conclusion that, look, the best way to get things done is not from within this two party system that has its own interests at heart and not ours.

So Jenny is joining, now at this point, like a, small battalion of elected officials around the country who are raising their hands.

And that's going to grow and grow as more people realize, by the way, you don't need to change your party registration to join the forward party.

I think Jenny did, but, you can stay a Democrat, or Republican or be an independent because this is a positive, inclusive movement.

And that's one reason why we're going to succeed, where some earlier efforts maybe fell short.

So tell me, let's talk about resources.

You said number three, which is impressive, but what kind of budget annual budget does the party have now?

Over the course of the last 18 months we've been in, let's call it the 5 to $10 million range.

So substantial.

Yeah.

I mean, it's good fun.

There are a lot of people who make monthly donations, to Forward Party because they say, look, I don't know if it's going to work, but this is certainly a better antidote to what's going on than any of the other stuff, because all the other stuff they're getting is what, like sensationalist, alarmed email saying, you know, send us money immediately or, you know, like something terrible is going to happen.

And that's the tenor again.

That's how the $10 billio is going to get spent in 2024.

So there are, at this point tens of thousands of Americans, who have joined the forward Party and decided, look, this is, worth, not just my time, but maybe some money.

And how about some big donors who have, so some of our bigger donors, our board members like Chris Noble of Nirvana, or, business leader, Jim Robinson the fourth.

So there are people who see what we're building and are incredibly excited because this is the most prominent independent political effort in a generation.

Everyone is really, really pumped about our potential, in large part because we hav the right strategy and approach.

Aaron and let me try and break this down for you as the math guy.

So there are about 520,000 elected offices around the country.

It turns out that almost 70% of them are uncontested or uncompetitive because you're in a red zone.

So there's a Republican there.

And then like if you ran as a Democrat, you lose immediately or you're in a blue zone.

And the reverse is true.

So we are getting people to switch and affiliate with us, including mayors like Jenny Arndt, because a lot of the mayoral positions and county executive positions and schoo board positions are nonpartisan.

And so you show up and say, look, I'm not here to play the blue versus red war.

I'm trying to get things done for my community.

And when we come along and say, you want to affiliate with us, if you do, you'll get some new volunteers.

You'll get a mailing list, you'll get some new friends.

And they say, well, that's a whole heck of a lot more than I have now.

So we think we're going to get hundreds of locally elected officials joining forward just through enlistment.

You know, again, these are things that have not been done in American politics, maybe ever.

So, you know, it's the concept of allowing people to stay registered with their original party that's definitely, a different concept.

And so, yeah, I'm fascinated at that idea.

I can see in a state like Colorado where the plurality of voters are unaffiliated, that that would be attracted by.

So we can see how Democrats and Republicans here who tend to be more moderate, would be attracted as well.

So I'm interested to see how that that plays out here.

We've had third parties her with some really great success at time.

In fact in one gubernatorial election, the candidate for, I think it was the American Constitutional Party or something like that actually got more vote than the Republic can nominee.

Wow.

That's saying something.

Yeah, well, it was a fairly bizarre situation, but that's another story.

But still, that amazed me.

Yeah.

And we do have, really robust effort with an executive committee here in Colorado.

If you go to forward party.com and click on Colorado and we are, registering fo party status here in the state, why do you thin the two party system has failed so miserably to address, technological issues?

And certainly, I mean, we've don almost nothing on social media.

Even and that's that, you know, 23 years in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's what, you know, what what what is the defect there?

I mean, you've mentioned I, when you look at data privacy, we're way behind, Europe, let's say.

Yeah, exactly.

Why can't we, tackle those issues successfully or can we, well, we could if you had a better functioning system.

And, I touched on it earlier where if I do nothing do I pay a price at the polls?

No, I don't, I'm in a blue zone.

I'm in a red zone.

It doesn't matter.

We also have a bit of a meritocracy building wher the average House member is 59.

The average senator is 64.

So you generally have leadership that's a little bit more advanced in age.

Much more advanced.

Yeah, much more advanced in age.

When we'd have we might have two presidential candidates, who are combined 160 in 2024.

They'll argue experience.

Yeah.

There'll be a lot of experience potentially, but it's not necessarily good experience.

Oh, well, I in two thirds of Americans are not excited about that matchup.

But it's just, an illustration of the fac that you have a political class that is, let's say, super experienced, to a poin where a lot of these technology issues aren't native to them.

And then in terms of trying to address it, if I don't address it, nothing happens.

Hey, we actually even got rid of the congressional agency that was supposed to advise us on technology matters, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago.

So we just wandering around, if you go to these, these offices, you'll see a lot of them are using very archaic technologies.

They do have staffer that are a little bit younger.

So.

Oh, I should not, omit the fact that you have these tech companies that have a lot of money and lobbying power.

They say they're they're they're.

Don't worry about it.

We got it.

We will self-regulate.

Which you know, obviously is nonsense in this context.

And then members of Congress are like, oh, I guess there's nothing to see here.

Now they're trying to get it together on AI, whether they deliver or not.

Will remain to be seen.

But again, think about it.

Let's say they don't deliver and you're really upset about it.

Like, do you have options at the polls?

And the vision we have for Forward Party is imagine a country where when you had these two candidates, you liked them both so much, you had a hard time deciding, and then you could even rank them both in a process like ranked choice votin and to say, hey, like Aaron one and, Andrew two, as opposed to now what's the game?

The game is to make one of the options unacceptable, unacceptable to you and then have you hold your nose and pick the one you can live with.

So, okay, so, you know a lot of people aren't familiar with ranked choice voting.

So what you're describin in terms of ranked choice voting is simply where you have a list of candidates and everybody gets to pick their first, second, third, fourth choice, whatever.

You count up the vote for first place and the person who has the leas first place votes, you look only at that person's ballot to see who was their second choice, and then you allocate thos votes to the other candidates.

And your assumptio is all the voters for the other candidates would still keep their first choices the same.

So what I think a lot of people in favor of ranked choice voting do a really poor job of explaining it, because what it really is, is you're saying to voters, if someone doesn't get a majority of the vote on the first round, we're going to hold multiple elections, but your vote always counts and your priority stays the same.

But you don't have to fill out another ballot.

You don't have to go to the polls.

You don't have to mail anything in.

And ultimately, as the list gets shorter and we out we continue to reallocate votes.

Somebody gets a majority of votes.

In other words, there will be two people left and we know which one you would vote for.

Yeah.

And we know you know which one other people would vote for.

And that means somebody actually wins with a majority of the votes.

That's exactly why.

I mean, implemented is that they had two gubernatorial races where the winner got less than 50% because you had multiple candidates.

You know, let's say you have four candidates in a primary.

The winner could get 33, 34%.

And then they come in, and people are like, wait a minute, who voted for this person?

So whereas with ranked choice voting, or as it's called in in some context, instant runoff voting, like you said, you'r just having multiple elections, but it's happening all in the same ballot as opposed to bring everyone back spending millions of dollars.

By the way, the turnout for runoff is very low, generall because people like, wait, did I already do this?

So so there are it.

Also, by the data, it helps women candidates and underrepresented minority candidates because they have a better shot at coalition building.

And in practice in Alaska, this type of system, had Sarah Palin lose to, state legislator named Mary Pattullo who was much more congenial and, positiv and able to build a coalition.

So there are many positives to this dynamic, but it also gets rid of the spoiler effect.

And this goes to what I was saying, where it's like, hey, I don't care if you like me as long as you hate the other person marginally more.

And that's why I'm going to spend all this money on, on, attack ads.

If you have this ranked choice voting system, then you can vote for whomever you like, even if you don't think they have a great chance of winning and not spoi anything, not mess anything up.

I mean, everything you're hearing about the presidential race right now is like, oh no, someone's going t mess it up by being a spoiler.

And, my very, very simple answer to that is like, look, let's just shift to ranked choice voting, and then there can be no more spoilers.

The this is the way that the two party system is enforcing its duopoly is essentially saying, look, we can't give you any choices meaningfully, oh, we're going to force you to choose this.

And the way out of this is to say, I would like instant runoff and ranked choice voting and make it so anyone can vote, you know, for whomever they want without getting bullied.

And, and then the major parties look at that and say, wait a minute, we can't have you actually have a choice because then you might not vote for us, you know?

And then Americans are like, isn't that what democracy is supposed to look like?

Like, isn't it supposed to be about, you know, whether I like, you know, whether you can keep me from voting for someone else?

I think another great advantage is how it can change the tenor of campaigns.

Because if you're running, and even if you're ahead of everyone else instead of attacking others to to knock them down, what you realize is, wait a minute, that person, that person isn't likely t finish in first or second place, but that candidate's vote are going to get redistributed.

So you can't be a jerk, right?

Or or if you are a jerk, you're not going to get those votes.

Yes.

Well, what happens is so let's say it's you.

Me and Monica are running in a race.

And then I think Monica wins that she'll get on the first ballot.

But let's say I trash you.

You suffer, but I suffer too.

And then Monica just keeps on sailing.

So if you have a ranked choice voting dynamic, you want people to rank you second.

And trashing people is no a great way to accomplish that.

Well, you know, I think it's a great system.

One of the objections I know when I have a couple minutes left, for this segment, what are the objections to ranked choice voting?

So the objections are not based in the data.

One is it's going to be too confusing for voters.

Meanwhile my seven year old can rank ice cream flavors one, two, and three.

You know, like they go ahead and say, you know, they don't have chocolate.

I'll take vanilla.

Another is around the administration.

Modern voting machines can do ranked choic voting very, very effectively.

And every place it's been tried, 80 to 90% of voters find it simple to use.

And like it and want to do it again.

They also rank more than one candidate because, by the way, you don't have to.

You can just go, and vote for Erin and walk out, but then you feel like you're leaving votes on the tabl and you're like, you know what?

Not only am I going to rank Erin one, I'm going to rank Monica two and Andrew three or whatever.

True test that's.

But but that' the great aspect of it that you you don't lose anythin by ranking everybody as opposed to strategies in races where you can vote for multiple candidates.

You know, people do bullet voting and things like that.

Okay, last quick thing.

One of the things I saw, you made a commitment not to run for president in 2024.

Tell me why.

And I assume that doesn't foreclose other years.

Oh one of my jokes is apparently I've got another 40 years there.

But our attention to the forward part is based on our current the candidates.

Right.

But I'll be a while to do the math.

But, our focus on the forwar party is state and local races.

Well, we think there's a enormous opportunity and hunger.

People are joining forward party every day.

Forward party.com.

And that's where we're building.

I also have looke at the numbers, and it's highly likely that if I were to ru or someone like me were to run, it would increase the chances of Trump winning.

And that's not something that I think, we should be doing.

All right.

Fair enough.

All right.

This was great for segment one.

And again, this is just part one of our special two part series with Andrew Yang I'm Aaron Harbor.

Thanks for watching.

But be sure to watch part two.