The Quantum-Leap Forward Party
Andrew Yang’s Forward Party could take a lesson from over-the-top Up-Wingers.
Andrew Yang has taken a lot of shit this week for wishy-washy messaging about his new political venture, the Forward Party. I like Yang as a person and have always nominally supported his various projects. He’s adamant about three priorities: rank-choice voting, nonpartisan primaries, and independent redistricting commissions—great things.
But his messaging recently has been disappointing with vapid, broken-record-like talking points about the “common-sense-consensus.” And the fact that he seems eager to align himself with visionless Republicans and bland moderates is just not inspiring. I’m no longer holding my breath that he’ll end up bringing any meaningful change to American politics. Is he still worth paying attention to?
At minimum, Yang exists as a constant reminder that things could be different. Like most people, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about “politics” in terms of a handful of pre-defined hot-button issues. I’ve carefully refined my talking points on abortion. I’ve evolved on the issues of immigration and drug legalization. Etc.
These are all important issues, and they’re considered “hot-button” for good reason. But the focus of political discussions can be wildly different, both in terms of the individual issues people discuss and in terms of structural reforms.
The problem, which Yang is currently experiencing, is that it might be impossible to articulate that things could be different without either sounding naïve or intellectually wishy-washy. In reality, making things different is a radical affair, not something that can be passed off as the common-sense consensus.
Consider the slogan for Yang’s movement: “Not left. Not right. Forward.” This is essentially meaningless poetry, as virtually any issue imaginable fits to some degree into the left/right framework, and pretending otherwise is silly. Also, if anyone paid attention to Yang’s policy proposals during the 2016 presidential race, they would have noticed that his proposals were essentially all leftist.
The concept “Not left or right but forward” doesn’t have to be safe and driven by common sense. In 1973, the futurist FM Esfandiary (aka FM-2030) published his political manifesto Up-Wingers. Replace his term “Up” with “Forward” and you’ve got a very Yang-like conception of moving the country away from the tired left-right struggle—except Esfandiary’s version is (delightfully!) much more radical. Here’s a taste, lightly edited for clarify and emphasis:
To be Up you must sever all ideological ties with the Right/Left establishment. You must make a break with the traditional concept of linear historical progress. That is now too slow and limited.
You must be prepared to quantum-leap forward. This means starting with a new set of premises, new visionary aims.
The Right/Left revolutionary, for instance, wants to overthrow a government. The Up-Winger wants to overthrow the very concept of leadership-government, replacing it with cybernated systems
In the coming years, you will hear much about the Up-dimension. Right and Left will become irrelevant. Conservatism, liberalism, and Left-wing radicalism will continue to become indistinguishable — they are all conservative. They are all Down.
Although this reads like a crazy person’s screed, this type of bombastic passion may be what the “not left or right but forward” idea needs. Has Trump ever delivered a coherent speech on anything? And yet he’s amassed an extraordinarily powerful army of loyalists.
We could get rank-choice voting. We could get nonpartisan primaries. And independent redistricting commissions. We could keep going and add Washington, DC and Puerto Rico as states. We could even update the Constitution…
But I highly, highly doubt any of this will happen without an incredibly charismatic leader and forceful rhetoric. Wishy-washy messaging and half-hearted appeals to the “common-sense consensus” are not gonna cut it.
But let’s keep Yang around in our political conversation for at least one purpose. The gentle reminder that things could be different.
For more of my thoughts on the Forward Party, check out my recent episode on the Lifestyle Futurism podcast: