Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Yang: Focus on the problems that got Trump elected

CNN host: 

Pete Buttigieg criticized Joe Biden for Hunter being on the Ukraine board. What do you have to say about it?


Andrew Yang: 

     "I think Democrats ought to be focused on the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place, the fact that we are going through the most profound economic transformation of our time. We need to provide a new positive vision for America."




Good answer.



1. The CNN host wanted a newsworthy squabble. The Hunter Biden problem is real, even if Joe Biden and Democrats try to dismiss it, because it undermines the Democratic Trump-is-corrupt-and-in-the-swamp argument. Burisma hiring Hunter Biden was archetypal swamp behavior. Pete Buttigieg commented on it.

Yang did not bite. He focused back on solving actual problems important to Americans.

2. No enemies. Yang is unique among the candidates for president in his focus on impersonal, third party forces, not identity or morality or ideological enemies. He says the problem with America's economy isn't the ruling class predation described by Sanders nor the corruption described by Warren. It is the impersonal forces shaping the modern economy. Technological change and the global economy created the squeeze on the young and poor and working Americans who are angry, and for good reason. Income doesn't trickle down, the young are buried in debt, houses cost too much in areas where the jobs are. The problems that created left and right populist revolts are real.

He doesn't criticize corporations for being immoral. They do what is in their nature and incentive to do: avoid taxes while they push to be bigger and more profitable, and do so by buying influence with legislators. More important, Yang does not sound like he is fighting with anyone. He is not at war with whites, or Christians, or even Trump. He has a populist solution, without creating populist enemies.The problems are real, and people's anger is justified, but it isn't solved by fighting the culture war. The problem is progress and technology and it snuck up on us. We can fix it with something that people would actually like.

As Yang presents it, a Universal Basic Income is not a new idea, nor a left wing idea, and it is not theft or a giveaway. Nixon had considered it. Conservative economists has suggested it: spread the wealth. It can be done by monetizing the value that each American creates by offering up his extraordinarily valuable data to technology companies who use it and sell it and currently pay little in taxes. Yang would tax those corporations, and re-distribute the money to the people who created the value. That is how we pay for the UBI.

Yang's UBI runs into the American--and especially Republican--value of self reliance and the resentment that "other people"-- blacks or immigrants or lazy people or other unworthy--might freeload on the hard work of people like themselves, who actually deserve the government benefits they get. Yang's presents it not as a benefit for the poor but as a unifying alternative to class consciousness. Everyone gets it, for being an American, and poor people will spend it. Everyone will benefit

Could Yang actually win the nomination?

Probably not.

He is a fresh face and the Democrats want one. He looked good, smart, and practical. He presents as a modern manager: suit but no tie, a uniform of technology and millennials at work, not old fashioned Wall Street. Democrats have liked technocratic managers in the past. Dukakis ran as one. Bloomberg is doing it now, too. 

Yang can appear to be solving the problems that Sanders and Warren address, without defining it as a divisive war against enemies. 

But Yang's biography hinders him. He has not been a successful executive of something important, like a state. Credible allies in academia and business, plus Republicans saying the idea is a good one, could change all that, but it has not happened yet..

Yang demonstrates one way for a Democrat to break through a partisan divide between Trump's white Christian ethno-nationalist populism and Democratic identity politics resistance to Trump: solve the problems that have created the populist revolt. 

His message is optimistic. The American problem is fixable, a message of hope and change.

That message has a track record of success.




2 comments:

Rick Millward said...

Andrew Yang is very smart, and I think an example of the "technocrat" that will solve problems with logic, science, and the cold efficiency of the superior mind. In his own way he's like Bernie, idealistic, visionary and unelectable. I'm unsure of where this path leads, perhaps a policy institute or think-tank, but usually these candidates disdain public office and re-enter commerce after their run at power.

Maybe a post in the Warren administration? Secretary of Commerce? NASA?

Thad Guyer said...

Cultural Liberals are Under Siege

I agree that cultural conservatives “feel” under siege, but they actually aren’t. It’s our side that is actually being beaten back. That Donald Trump is POTUS, that the liberal media is in a constant state of frenzy if not paranoia, that SCOTUS and the judiciary are controlled by the right wing, that the largest cable network is FoxNews, that climate science has been on the defensive for years, that DACA “kids” have nothing, that Muslim immigration has been shut down along with the southern border, that not a single minority is left standing in the Democratic primary, on and on, who is on the defensive? Certainly not the right, the holders of that great American Traditionalism franchise are not just not on defense, they are ascendant here and across Europe and Latin America. It’s not their way of life that is under siege, it’s ours. Yes, we who are bolstered by the non-governmental Hollywood and Broadway, by the NYT, WaPo, CNN, by the liberal monopoly of higher education, by the UN and sweeping network of liberal NGOs and think tanks, with all of that “free” liberal media, thought and cultural thrust, the cultural conservatives are yet ascendant. Blue as it gets NYC has the most racially segregated public schools in the USA, deep blue California the scourge of massive homelessness, and Chicago with a murder rate rivaling Honduras. Blue culture is imploding, Red culture is stable, and who is going to stem our decline? An old socialist recovering from heart surgery who is not a Democrat, a babbling ex-VP with a ne'er-do-well son choking his momentum, a rabid anti-capitalist Native American impersonator? In this battle of values, we are losing.