• happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's a significant mayoral position but it's not a national position and as a progressive he's either coming up against the most powerful concentrations of neoliberalism in the country with a half-baked ideological counter to them or he's immediately going to be pulled right by those forces and sabotage what little credentials he had as a progressive. To me that's a step down from what Buttigieg got, where he can at least advocate for policies at a federal level. Buttigieg can blame his failures on other federal entities but still push a pie-in-the-sky dream of functioning rail infrastructure. Yang will have the full responsibility of implementing policies hostile to all of the entrenched powers of an authoritarian city-state without them being neutered to the point of uselessness by every other liberal.

    To me that's giving him the rope to hang himself with. If he loses the primary he's the guy who fails at a national and local level. If he wins the election he's Andrew Yang and people expect him to be Bernie-lite instead of a techbro now affiliated with the NYPD and Wall Street.

    • DetroitLolcat [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I mean yeah it's a step down from what Buttigieg got, Yang got like one-tenth of the vote Buttigieg got in the primary. Buttigieg got fifth place overall and "won" a state, Yang dropped out after getting dump-trucked by Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer in New Hampshire.

      I also don't think Yang cares about his progressive credentials. I don't think Yang ran as a progressive in the primary nor does he want to be referred to as one. He was the farthest right candidate in the primary on entitlement spending and the minimum wage and after dropping out bashed Bernie on CNN then endorsed Biden. He is the future of centrist Dems and ran as such. I don't think people are voting Yang expecting him to be Bernie-lite nor do I think he wants to be Bernie-lite.