Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate, said that his former party will continue to flounder until they can claim a new leader well before the next presidential election.
In an exclusive interview with Newsweek published on Tuesday, Yang said that Democrats are not helping themselves by waiting three more years to choose a new leader based on old notions of how politics work.
“What you need is for the Democrats to have their primary as soon as possible so that they can anoint a leader who can then speak for the party and make a cogent case,” Yang said. “It’s difficult for anyone to do so when they’re waiting for another couple of years out of some antiquated calendar.”
The tech entrepreneur said that while California Gov. Gavin Newsom, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., all maintain some level of party influence, there remains a “vacuum” that gives the Republicans a clearer message.
Yang pointed to the economic anxiety felt by much of the country as a window for Democrats to exploit.
“I believe the tariffs are going to impede growth and increase prices for Americans,” he said. “It takes a number of months for those things to percolate through the economy, but when I talk to CEOs, they are very leery about what to do with their increased costs.”
Yang, who is the founder of the Forward Party, said that he had been in touch with Tesla CEO Elon Musk over the summer when the idea of a more prominent third party was gaining traction.
In 2024, Yang backed Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota for the Democratic nomination and has long pushed the idea of universal basic income, citing the threat of automation and AI in making much of human work obsolete.
“Last I looked at the numbers, 44% of American jobs are either repetitive, cognitive or repetitive-manual and, thus, theoretically subject to automation, and different firms and universities have taken a look and kind of landed around the same zone,” he said.
Yang added, “If you wind up with millions of Americans that are replaced and supplanted by AI, then you would think that there’d have to be a dramatic shift in terms of how people are able to prosper and meet their needs.”
As for another run at elected office, Yang said that he is “very young in political years” and added, “I’d be surprised if I was done with electoral politics.”
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