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Today, I'm speaking with Andrew Yang. Andrew has a new book just out today. I believe the title is forward notes on the future of our democracy. And he also has a new political party. The forward party. And in today's podcast, we cover all of the relevant experiences and issues that led him to write the book and found the party.
We cover the obvious Brokenness of our political system, the importance of things like open primaries and ranked Choice voting. As a means of reforming it. We talked about his experience running for the presidency and for the job of Mayor in New York City, very different experiences, and we cover. Many other interesting issues here, politically and socially. Anyway, it's always great to speak with Andrew.
And I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
And now I'm bringing you Andrew. Yang.
I am back with Andrew Yang, Andrew. Thanks for joining me. Again,
Sam. It's great to be back with you. It's you know, anytime I talk to you, something good is going on
right now. We're going to launch you in one direction or another every time we speak. That's that's what I'm getting used to it. Now first. We should mention at the top that you have a new book. The title is forward notes on the future of our democracy, which is essentially your Memoir of being a presidential.
It, which is very had to be a fascinating experience and it comes across in the book. And then you're basically your pitch for the ways in which we can change our politics and the, and the role for the forward party in that conversation. And so, I think we'll, we'll save that that final piece for the end, but let's talk about the nature of the problem. You say very early in the book that democracy itself is
Using legitimacy. So much of the book is a look at the ways in which our system is broken and this Brokenness relates to politics. It relates to the media. It relates to a fundamental distrust in institutions that is now spreading to catastrophic effect. And it also relates to the issue that really launched your presidential run, which is the is a growing concern around inequality.
You know, you know, wealth inequality in particular as you wanted to address by Ubi but also with respect to education and Healthcare and other variables. So I think there's really three problems we could talk about before we start getting into Solutions, politics, your to Party politics, the media and inequality in general. And I thought we could just kind of track through them and get your view on them. As a candidate may be in both is, you know.
In your presidential run. And I'd be interested to hear how the run for mayor of New York. It was a different experience. So let's start with politics. What was it like to run for president? And and what was it? Like, let's take it from the beginning. I know we've talked about this a little bit but your book is so interesting on this point. What was it like to do this? When no one knew who you were? I mean that will end for the longest time.
That was the case. So at the outset, it seems like a completely quixotic Enterprise to declare your candidacy for the presidency. And, you know, the reactions of friends and people who would support you out of some prior relationship, without any expectation that you could possibly get anywhere. Yeah, take us back to that to the beginning.
Sure. I do tell some fun stories in the book about how I'd go to my son's birthday party and another dad would
Say, oh, what are you do? And then I didn't want to say I'm running for president because I would have seemed crazy. It's so I would say I'm in policy or I'm an author and then my evasiveness would often not work and then I'd wind up saying, I'm actually running for president now and then we'd have a 30-minute conversation about that and at the end of it, they would not sign up to volunteer for my campaign. They'd be like, oh, that's really interesting. Good luck with that. So you can imagine why I wouldn't really want to have that conversation.
Over again. Yeah. And during that time. I'm so grateful to you, Sam. Because you and I sat down for a conversation like this one and your podcast really launched my campaign in multiple ways, one, the people who listened decided to take an interest in my campaign, and supported a donated, which I was incredibly grateful for. But then this Iowan who is organizing something called a wingding was a huge fan of yours.
Yes, and decided to invite me to Iowa to speak in 2018 on the basis of our conversation. So you were a better friend to me than a lot of others to despite the fact that at that point, we were still just, you know, getting to know each other and you said something to another journalist that I really appreciated. You said. Well, you know, I don't know, Andrew that well, but he seems like a fairly normal fellow who just decided to ruin his life by running for president.
I heard that as I go. I'm so glad that came through but the Earth, the early months of the campaign were like that. Where I had a vision for what the campaign could be and that Vision slowly started to grow. Thanks to people like you and the people who worked on my
campaign. Yeah, this this is so one of the points you make in the book, which was a genuine surprise for me. I mean, it shouldn't have been. I've certainly noticed this process made, it was it was all on the
The surface, but until you pointed it out. I was someone who along with. I think most people assumed that there is a kind of egocentricity and narcissism, and just search for ego gratification, that is informing many presidential runs. And I mean, that, that may be the case in certain candidates, but what you may clear
And which really should not have been surprised him, but you make it so vividly clear and discussing the experience of Marianne Williamson and Joe sestak.
That the process for most people unless you already happen to be a front-runner for some reason or another the process is just ego. Annihilating. Maybe you can really talk
about that. Yeah, you show up my first trip to New Hampshire. There were literally two people there waiting for me, maybe one and one person just happened to be there and politely pretended. They were there for me and that was an entire day. I went to a rally in Iowa Labor Day in.
The 18 that Drew 12 people, maybe, and none of them were there for me, either. And these were everyday occurrences and keep in mind at this point, though. I was a very, very Anonymous presidential candidate, you know, I'd still done some things in my life. Like, I'm still like a person who, like, values his time and, you know, has a family and stuff. So you would do things all the time that we're in positively reinforcing and the media.
Leah, as I write in the book as a huge part of this Dynamic where the media will completely sideline. You if you're not one of the major candidates and when they do mention you, they will mock you. It really is the way it goes as happened with many other candidates and happened to me to some measure. And so, when you talk about the problems, I outline in the book, the media Gauntlet was such a huge part of running for president, and I'm now convinced that that's
Or to our problems. Like it scored a why we can't seem to make any real
progress. If memory serves, you weren't mocked so much. And when I think about the mocking part, I do think about Marianne Williamson, who, as you point out in her own life, you know, had a, you know, a very successful career. Lots of people loved her. She made a lot of money. She had a very big platform. She ran a successful charity, but she's very accomplished in her.
Our world. I mean, you might not agree with her metaphysics in the end, but she really had a very comfortable life that, you know, she didn't need to screw up and then she runs for the presidency and is immediately framed as a kind of punch line. And it's, I think you could have predicted it with something like a hundred percent certainty, that that would have happened but that version happens, but then they're, they're the people who have
Have a fair amount of Gravitas in terms of their biographies, whether it's there's no obvious joke to make at their expense, but they're just utterly ignored by the media. And for you, you kind of fell more into that then and there were, there were some egregious example, maybe say something about Joe sestak for a second because you know, I wrote in the margin of your book when you mentioned him. I literally wrote who a question mark because I have never heard of Joe sestak.
Right.
So did you that Google it? But look at Bob? No, I uh, I
haven't yet. He I might Blank Slate with her apart. From what I read in your book. He's got, you know, give me a little color on on Joe for a second.
Joe has a PhD from Harvard was Admiral in the US, Navy was entrusted with thousands of lives and was a two-term member of Congress from Pennsylvania. So he's a very, very serious person who had spent decades.
Service and had put his life on the line for the country. When he decided to run for president. It was like he didn't exist and it was somewhat mystifying. I spent time with Joe. So that's another thing that happens on the trail Sam is that I have hung out with virtually all of the other candidates in union halls and people's driveways and at the fair and the steak fry. So you do get a sense.
Of people and I have spent time with Joe and Mary, Ann and many others. But Joe is a great guy, a great man, a real Patriot. He does have a lot of Gravitas where he's commanded, thousands of people, the media treated him like a nonentity, and because he's a committed individual. He even walked across the state of New Hampshire, as a way to try and generate attention for his campaign completely ignored. And when it was mentioned, it was mentioned as kind of a
Get the crazy person sort of thing. I thought that was deeply unfair. Because, you know, again, if you look at right Jose record, he's a very serious individual, who should have been given a fair
hearing. Yeah. And in your case, there were was some fairly Stark and egregious efforts to ignore you literally like fundraising or if memory serves you were like fundraising Graphics, where he liked the showing the candidates who had raised a certain amount of
Money or gone up in the polls enough to make debates and you were left out where people who had raised less money and were ranked lower than you were left in the graphics. This happened, most on MSNBC, how much of this I think you uncovered at one point that there was a policy that you should just not be talked about. You know, how much of this was inadvertent and how much of it was actually an explicit effort to disappear your
campaign.
It happened consistently enough, where you really could not chalk it up to neglect, or incompetence - I think the exact count was a dozen times and we heard later from a producer, Ariana pocari, who is at MSNBC during that time that she was given a list of candidates not to ever invite on the show or interview. And I was on that list. So there was definitely a decision made at some point and if you wanted to hypothesize
As you know, I believe that there is an ownership structure at MSNBC, where you could draw a pretty direct line to people who were backing Joe. But at the time, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, and it was only later in the campaign. When I had just gone through debate that MSNBC and moderated where they clearly wanted. Nothing to do with me where I decided to say look like I'm not going to appear on MSNBC unless they start actually treating us fairly. And at that point, they
Completely omitted any mention of me from the race for the following month plus during really the final stretch of the campaign. So it was an important time. It was most Stark when I actually made the seventh debate stage, which was a very significant piece of news. I was the last non-white candidate to make the debate stage and MSNBC decided not to mention that even though that was mainstream news for just about everybody. Hmm.
So I, there's gonna be more to say about the media.
In a minute because it's just an enormous problem on many fronts now, but going back to your presidential run before. Well really, at any point. What was the most surprising part about this process to you? I mean, you must have had some expectations of what it would be like, in what way is where those expectations
violated. It was around my treatment by certain types of Institutions where I kind of imagined
Maybe some people would be excited to have a conversation about the automation of jobs and technology and AI in. Some people might even be interested in or excited by by my being the first Asian-American man to run for president as a Democrat. Like some people who really love to talk about the first in various categories. And neither of those things was true. It turns out that, that, that what I think of as journalistic, organizations of fact, did not seem to
Care about the decimation of millions of manufacturing jobs and the ongoing Automation and dehumanization of the economy and what it made me realize Sam and made me more grateful to thinkers. Like you is that there is a particular discourse and language and media. There's a particular discourse and language and politics and they aren't the discussion of fact in the way that you'd hope and I thought they were going in and so my
Success and performance ended up being based upon all of these behaviors and adaptations that I adopted in order to try and compete. But it was very discouraging to me that it seemed like when I was talking about economic facts and figures it was like, I was speaking a foreign
language. Yeah. So yeah, that's something that you go through in the book as well. Maybe just two hacks you found for a system that really didn't care to hear from you on.
Substantive issues, but what could be exploited by a dance video or a workout video? What did you begin to think is? What do you think now about this system? By which we pick our leaders, right? I mean, it's just I know what we're going to get into the political reforms you you recommend but it's just it had to be bizarre to see that the way to get traction. I made the the classic moment of this from years past.
Which area has been much remarked upon, but like the moment where the Hillary Clinton's campaign was transformed when she shed a tear in a diner over, whatever it was, you know, it's like the fact that the attention of the media can be swung by. I guess the human interest component of a story with without any substance and it really can't be swung by substance. It seems
yes it. I characterize it as a reality TV show, at one point during the debates, but there are narratives and characters that the media in particular is interested in enhancing and elevating. And that's really the Crux of the coverage in my case, my leaning into humor or physical activities or whatever it was, and it up being positive and
Of our coverage and the energy. But Ezra Klein said something about how we're collapsing, systemic issues and to personalize narratives. And I think that's like a reasonable characterization of a lot of the political coverage though. There is a real agenda behind a lot of it where the media just decides to elevate certain characters, and ignore others. I think ignore is their main weapon of choice when they want someone not to get anywhere.
Think and then kind of like slightly mocking snide ridicule might be like their second weapon of choice. And then among the approved characters, then they'll constantly be trying to characterize people and talk about something around their relationships Behavior. Emotions. One thing that happened to me a lot on the trail and this is very true. Of this process is they are constantly digging for vulnerability.
99 times out of a hundred of, they find a vulnerability. It's not going to be good for you. Like they're not gonna be like, oh, this person's really human invulnerable. Isn't that nice? They'd be like, oh, look at this. So that, that that's one of the things that unfortunately makes politicians into automatons over time.
So how is running for mayor of New York? Different. We wanted to is a different office. Although unlike most mayor races it.
It does have a national lens on it, but it strikes me. The one big difference had to be that. By the time you, you ran for mayor. You were pretty famous. You know, you were not you or I think naturally viewed. I certainly viewed you as a front-runner without even looking at the polls because of your National platform at that point. How was your experience of being a candidate different?
It was a completely different Dynamic to your point Sam. We're on the presidential Trail. I was continuously trying to build up energy and race against Oblivion. Whereas in the mayoral, I was the center of attention. Essentially from day one. I will say that the media coverage tended to be quite negative or questioning. And they would chalk it up to my being the front-runner though. I think there might have been a couple of other Dynamics. And so, in many ways, it was the kind of the opposite of my presidential run. Where
Where instead of being the unlikely Underdog constantly doing things to get energy. Instead? I was like the front runner who is continuously under attack by other candidates through the Press often because that was their best way to try and
win.
Yeah, and what are you?
What do you make of the fact that you didn't win? Maybe if you had to ascribe it to a couple of the most important causes? What, what happened?
I think the single biggest variable was the reopening of the city and then the crime surge in New York where it was on the front page of at least some of the papers every day and that being the number one concern heavily favored Eric Adams. Because he was a
Officer earlier, the main narrative was around reopening and economic recovery. And those were things that people saw as a strength of
mine. Right, right. Okay. So let's just talk about our the, the political system as it is and what to do about it because I think wherever someone is on the spectrum of political concern bias persuasion, I think,
Everyone agrees that there's something less than optimal about our system as it exists. What do you, what do you ascribe the main dysfunction to at this point? How is it broken?
And this is the heart of my book, the deeper. I got into the Machinery. So to speak. And now at this point, I would consider myself either friends or friendly with
Dozens of political figures, most of them on the Democratic side because I ran as a Democrat, but, you know, all of these people and you start to get a sense of the environment that they operate within why we're stuck really. And so, I do want to go back to some first principles, because I've been learning myself about some things that I'd taken for granted. But the core argument in my book is that people will do
What their incentives demand. And if you are a political figure today, your incentives are to generally cater to the most polarized, and extreme points of view and voters in your District. Because that's who's going to vote you back in one numerical contrast that eyesight is that Congress has a 28 percent approval rating Nationwide right now, which probably doesn't surprise anyone listening to this. It's like a three or four of us, don't think things are
Well, the individual re-election rate for members of Congress is 92%. So even though seven out of ten of us are really, really sad without things are going, you're almost assured of re-election. If you decide to run, which most of them do because they really like this job, the people that will decide whether you come back, are not the mainstream public, but the ten to twenty percent most extreme voters in either.
Either the Democratic party or the Republican party, because eighty-three percent of the congressional districts are now safely Democratic or republican. So your incentives are to be less reasonable and more ideological. And unfortunately, that's what we're seeing on both sides, which is leading us to this historic level of polarization. That we all can feel that is resulting in political violence and could end up being a new Civil War that.
Ends up bringing down our democracy as it currently exists.
I just want to reiterate your, your opening point about the power of incentives because what, when viewed from outside, there are so many institutions, and it's just so many human dramas, where you, where it's very easy to believe that the people involved who are doing these inexplicably stupid heinous things.
Either are sociopaths or malignantly selfish or total morons and it's very easy to believe the worst of the individuals involved until you have some insight into the system in which they're forced to function. And if it's a system where the incentives are terrible, even very good people. Very competent, people, very smart people wind up doing disastrous.
Stupid destructive and even seemingly evil things. It's not to say there aren't narcissists and incompetence and people who you wouldn't want in power in these systems, but it's got to be for the most part. A story of decent fairly competent. People incentivised terribly by the system that's in
place. That's exactly right Sam. And a result of understanding. This is that
We should not expect it to change our get any better, it all those people will if anything the incentives are higher now than they've ever been, and the political incentives toward the extremes are now compounded by the media, which at this point is separating us into ideological camps and ginning up support for the good guys and, you know, hatred for the bad guys. And then pouring gasoline on the whole thing is social media which obviously is going to reward.
The most inflammatory and aggressive language and behavior. So, we're being set up, we're being set up to turn on each other. To eventually end up disintegrating. In terms of the society. We currently regard as no, like, a normal safe environment. And that's what I concluded from my journey into this, which is that these people are not bad people. Some of them are not great people, but like, for the most part there,
Are reasonable people responding to perverse incentives. And so then the great project becomes how can you in real life improve their incentives? And I do want to give a shout out to you and this is something that is a major theme of the book. Is that to me, you represent the antidote in many ways. Sam. It's like what are the, you know, media incentives for you. I mean, you're just like a highly reasoned individual who like you don't have the same. You know, I don't think your producers.
Giving you a list of people not to talk to or anything like that. You know, that there's like a search right now. People are groping for trusted, perspectives, and voices more and more. And I just want to thank you personally, for being such a huge figure for people who are looking for wisdom and Truth. Really?
Oh, well, I guess it's great to hear and I happen to be in a spot where there are there.
Almost no incentives that aren't of my own making, you know, and I have consciously designed my life that way and it's, you know, it's not that it's impossible to be badly incentivized even in this space, but it's much harder and it's, you know, and that's why I'm here. And it's it's a relief, frankly, to be able to say whatever I want to say and to talk to whoever I want to talk to and to not be calibrating any of that against any kind of outside pressure, you know, even pressure from
Audience. And I don't know how much you followed me down these, various by ways. But, you know, whenever I've discovered that a significant percentage of my audience really disagrees with me about something. That's the what, the one signal for me that I need to take pains not to be trained by in any web, because I notice other people being captured by Their audience in various ways. You know, I just have never wanted that. So, when I discovered that,
You know, a significant percentage of my audience. I never really drill down to what it was but it seemed like something like twenty percent favored, Trump, for reasons that I still cannot fathom. I just made it a point to not care how much pain I got from them. Every time I wanted to trample on Trump because I just, it just felt important. And so it is with the equally large percentage of my audience that is very far to the left and hates everything. I have to say about woke, nose and identity Politics. The
I get from them. I have decided to take as noise, rather than signal because I it just is just very important for me to preserve my freedom to say, what I think is true and important rather than to be course-correcting based on what's rewarding me from my audience and what you get on any of these pain points and this is this is obviously Amplified by social media is there's so much more energy from the haters than from the people who agree.
Be with you that it really you can really get blown around
by a highly disproportionate. Annoys. Yes, if someone's virulently opposed. It just seems like the most prominent thing in the world, even though there could be a hundred people who just silently
nodded. Yeah. Yeah. So we're living in the system where it's something less than 10% of any population can really steer the conversation on a polarizing issue because they just have so much more energy than so this
We got these various activist groups on the left and we've got you know, all the noise that comes out of trump a stand and you know, the most extreme voices over there you do, get the sense that on many points you have a lot of reasonable people that have been cowed into silence and therefore aren't influencing the conversation and and it's just and the media doesn't seem to care except I'm in the media. Just they just keep amplifying. The
Extremes. Well, again, that's where their incentives are and they've figured out that their readings will be higher and their ad Revenue will be higher if they cater to a particular point of view and then reinforce it. Yeah, there was an anecdote about cable TV. Producer, who said, look our people don't even regard us as news. They regard us as comfort which then will justify all sorts of things that you might do journalistically of your, like, a, your turns out. We're not even reporting the news here.
You know, and the fact that you have to take such great pains, I mean, you're acutely aware of the kind of pressures that some of these media figures and organizations would be under. But in their case, they don't have to, you know, self-regulate to that extent. It's be like, oh, what like my people like this. I mean, give them more of that, and then you'll be thanked for it and paid more for
it. Yeah. At the political level. What are the reforms that you think will really change the
System and the pressures that are on all of the, all of the, the various parties here.
I'm happy to say that I can use a real life example, that you're going to love Sam. This isn't my book because it didn't happen yet, but there was a handful of Republican Senators who decided to impeach Trump. And only one of them is up for re-election in 2022. And that is Senator Lisa. Murkowski of Alaska.
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