It is interesting to think about the psychology behind why so many progressives seem to dislike Yang but not the more conservative Adams. For DSA types, I guess it's simply because Yang is a Businessman and that's bad. Also he's Ivy League educated which is also bad. For "woke" (for lack of a better word) types, there doesn't seem to be a strong desire to actually compare Yang's and Adams' positions on policing and what not, even though Adams' positions appear to be further to the right. This could be because Adams is black and as a result they are either (1) inaccurately assuming that Adams is more progressive than he really is, or (2) accurately (?) guessing that an Adams win would be perceived in the media as more social justice-y (or at least less anti-woke) and if you are immersed all day in a world of hot takes, then projecting a social justice-y feeling or vibe does more to change society than enacting social justice policies.
"If you will, imagine explaining to someone who knows what words mean but who was in a coma for the last year, that the progressives are the ones who want to divert money away from public safety to pay for cash transfers, while the moderates want to tax unproductive landowners to pay for it."
Literally LOL (in enjoyment, that was very well-said).
I don’t think people aren’t taking his *ideas* seriously, they aren’t taking Yang himself seriously (other than that his star power has won over many people including Marc, which makes him a serious threat to win). And that lack of seriousness is with good reason.
On every other issue besides UBI, Yang largely seems to be a coin flip - he agrees with whoever he talked to last. Like on the bus lane in Flushing, one day he thought it was great and then one day he said it was terrible (because he talked to some shop owners who want parking and don’t understand how many people come by bus). Who knows what he really thinks.
If elected it’s very likely he will either have random views on other issues, based on whoever he hires, or rapidly fluctuating ones. I wouldn’t take that chance just because my candidate was best on one issue that matters to me.
Experience does matter in a role like mayor, because the mayor does a huge amount more than just proposing one big idea. And Yang has comically little experience.
Finally, I wouldn’t use Ritchie Torres’ support as all that much evidence of anything. Individual politicians support candidates for a lot of reasons including personal connection and ambition to get a role in an administration, not just policy. I don’t know Torres’ reasons and don’t want to impugn his motives, but it isn’t persuasive that Yang’s policies are necessarily best for his constituents.
I am a former resident of New York, consider myself a progressive, and generally like Andrew Yang and find him more funny than offensive. However, this article didn't really come off as a great defense for him.
First, the sweeping generalizations about the progressives just seem like a bit much. I don't feel a subgroup to the greater progressive left should be really be framed as representing the views of the entire progressive left.
Second, I gave Yang a chance when he was running for president, but I found some of him unappealing, frustrating, and overall unserious. His mayoral campaign has been an improvement, though.
Some of the things he does kind of make me feel he is not ideologically disciplined. The first politician I knocked on doors for was Barrack Obama. There were a lot of things he said I disagreed with. A lot of decisions he made I didn't like. However, he seemed like a serious person that reached the conclusions he did after serious deliberation. On the other hand, Andrew Yang comes off to me as someone saying shit in the moment, which gives me pause. Criticizing left-wing messaging is one thing, but I often felt he was acting in bad faith. For example, the appearances on right-wing media criticizing the left's identity politics in 2019, yet now he uses identity politics messaging on the campaign trail. He said one of his motivations for running for president was that he didn't feel he met politicians who really cared about the issues facing regular people. Yet, he mentions Cory Booker as one of his good friends. He complained that American society was too unforgiving when a comedian denied a job on SNL because of past racist comments. Yet, on the campaign trail, he takes issue with a racist caricature of him (which he should have, I agree with him on this). So I think it is essential to acknowledge differences between presidential candidate Yang and NYC Mayoral candidate Yang.
My interactions with his campaign people and Yang himself a couple of times left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't need a candidate to be "woke" (I don't even know what that word means anymore, to be honest). Still, there a numerous civil rights issues facing people of color, and Yang's people seem to think that his economic policies, especially what seemed like a slapped-together UBI policy, were a panacea. Him being an upbeat, optimistic polularist sometimes works. Still, him being constantly surprised at information voters were telling him about how bad certain things were for them was not a good look for Yang. It was at best frustrating, at worse condescending. If you start talking about UBI when I ask about voting rights, you lost me. I think the Yang Gang were just as out of touch in their own way. Just like some of the activists left, they often criticize.
Also, I am a black man that lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Harlem during the Bloomberg. I have no issue with the NYPD budget staying the same in an effort to fight crime, especially violent crime because the harmful effects of crime affect minority communities the most. However, the NYPD needs a lot of oversight, or they will operate as a racist, oppressive street gang that doesn't respect many of the minority residents they are sworn to protect. Getting my constitutional rights violated constantly was not fun, nor was having a gun in my face because they mistook me for someone else. My concern with Yang as mayor is his habit of courting right-leaning support and doing what is politically convenient for him will lead him to have a blind spot with the NYPD. If the NYPD can get the crime figures where he wants them, he will not hold them accountable. That is a significant worry for me.
Again, I generally like Yang and think he has some good ideas. But I think people a justified to have concerns about him and his judgment. Yang entered the race with a large amount of name recognition and a built-in fan base. Yet only being able to win a primary because of a larger weak field, abandoning much of your previous political messaging, and a unique primary system working in your favor doesn't seem like a major endorsement of Andrew Yang's politics.
I'm skeptical and but hopeful. I told my mother she should vote for him over Adams. I hope the right instincts kick in at the right time, and he does not do anything stupid while in office.
The point about progressives speaking like they are appealing to program managers at funds is super interesting. A while ago Perry Bacon Jr. wrote an article talking about how you determine if a leader actually speaks for the community they represent, saying it’s tricky to tell but you should think about who they are accountable to. It definitely sounds like Yang and Adams talk like they want to be accountable to the people of NYC, not just their self-selected peers. I wonder if a big challenge for progressives now is to figure out how to make sure their leaders are accountable to the masses.
Here we go again. Only 50 years after the New York City fiscal crisis, we seem to have forgotten that you can’t erect a comprehensive welfare state on a municipal basis, cash-driven or not, because you don’t have sovereignty and the tax base can easily flee. There is a reason that the successes have been Federal programs.
Most of the mayoral candidates (Yang included) are very specific in their ideas about how to spend city tax money on social welfare, but pretty vague or unrealistic on where the money is going to come from. or on how the budget will do this spending while also supporting the commonweal for the great majority of the City’s residents. Until the latest string of atrocities in the subway, most of them also cared more about being seen as sufficiently anti-police than about dealing with the creeping breakdown in law and order in the City.
Yet those two things - the economy and security - are going to be virtually the only important things in the next Mayor’s term. Maintaining any kind of progressive vision depends utterly on success in handling those two things. I can’t see Yang doing that. Instead I see a lot of small-bore stuff that gets some attention because it's out of the box. It merely goes to build his brand.
"At many times, it feels like the point of the progressive movement in 2021 isn’t to gain power and then enact reforms to ameliorate suffering, but rather to impress each other by saying the most inoffensive words in the most inoffensive order and then if you predictably lose in a landslide, so what, because everybody who didn’t agree with you from the start is racist anyway."
This so true, and it drives me nuts. Yesterday I talked to an older progressive mayor who had been inspired to go into politics by the civil rights movement. In describing his work he immediately talked about how he had been steadily accruing power. That's when I knew I liked the guy.
UBI made a lot more sense as a proposal from Yang the presidential candidate than from Yang the mayoral candidate. As it now stands, his municipal UBI isn't universal. It's only for the poor, so it creates exactly the kind of cliff-edge disincentive that a real UBI would avoid. (There are understandable reasons of cost not to make the program universal--but again that's a reason UBI should rely on the federal tax base, not the tax base of a single city.)
I don't really think aggressive income redistribution can work at the local level, so the candidates in this or any other municipal race ought to be judged by their positions on other issues.
Overall good article. But, I don't think that you can really compare a one time stimulus check going to 95% of people to a means tested annual check going to 5% of people in terms of popularity.
Second, I think you're making a quite unfair comparison to Biden with your use of the "nothing would fundamentally change" quote. It seems pretty clear in context that Biden was talking about the living standards of the wealthy people in the room (who Biden was and is planning to tax to pay for various progressive causes that will raise standards of living overall).
I don’t live in NYC so I haven’t been paying super close attention to the details of this race, but you’ve done a pretty good job moving my vague intuition that Yang is bad into a vague intuition that maybe Yang is good. Also I’m shocked that Yang is not even nearly as rich as Bernie or Warren were; it’s amazing the way narratives get constructed around candidates that have little bearing on the facts.
In general I’ve been struggling so much with people who call themselves progressives lately. I used to be one, and I really don’t feel like I’ve changed much, but what that word means feels like it’s changed around me. Definitely feeling this here in San Francisco where I think it’s hard to argue that the “progressives” on the Board of Supervisors are anything other than its most conservative members in terms of their complete resistance to any change in the status quo. Interesting to see something similar happening in NYC and across the country.
Sanders had a clear path to victory in both primaries (in a "this might work" sense not a "sure thing" sense), and very clear plans for how to govern differently than a centrist Democrat, especially on foreign policy. Warren's path to victory made sense on its own terms (tho' it was clearly based on mistaken assumptions), and she also had a very clear sense of what she could make the federal government do. In Congress AOC stands for a clear set of positions and moves the conversation in her direction.
The NYC municipal left seems mostly to be interested in talking a certain way. They don't *want* to win (look at the Morales campaign falling apart in a symbolic fight about unionizing jobs that will be gone in June), they don't plan to do anything different from De Blasio if they do (who is also on "the left" for whatever that's worth). If they had the least sense of urgency about what they claim to care about they'd be alarmed by Eric Adams. Instead they are offended by Yang, without understanding why he is popular or making any real effort to stop him.
It is interesting to think about the psychology behind why so many progressives seem to dislike Yang but not the more conservative Adams. For DSA types, I guess it's simply because Yang is a Businessman and that's bad. Also he's Ivy League educated which is also bad. For "woke" (for lack of a better word) types, there doesn't seem to be a strong desire to actually compare Yang's and Adams' positions on policing and what not, even though Adams' positions appear to be further to the right. This could be because Adams is black and as a result they are either (1) inaccurately assuming that Adams is more progressive than he really is, or (2) accurately (?) guessing that an Adams win would be perceived in the media as more social justice-y (or at least less anti-woke) and if you are immersed all day in a world of hot takes, then projecting a social justice-y feeling or vibe does more to change society than enacting social justice policies.
"If you will, imagine explaining to someone who knows what words mean but who was in a coma for the last year, that the progressives are the ones who want to divert money away from public safety to pay for cash transfers, while the moderates want to tax unproductive landowners to pay for it."
Literally LOL (in enjoyment, that was very well-said).
I don’t think people aren’t taking his *ideas* seriously, they aren’t taking Yang himself seriously (other than that his star power has won over many people including Marc, which makes him a serious threat to win). And that lack of seriousness is with good reason.
On every other issue besides UBI, Yang largely seems to be a coin flip - he agrees with whoever he talked to last. Like on the bus lane in Flushing, one day he thought it was great and then one day he said it was terrible (because he talked to some shop owners who want parking and don’t understand how many people come by bus). Who knows what he really thinks.
If elected it’s very likely he will either have random views on other issues, based on whoever he hires, or rapidly fluctuating ones. I wouldn’t take that chance just because my candidate was best on one issue that matters to me.
Experience does matter in a role like mayor, because the mayor does a huge amount more than just proposing one big idea. And Yang has comically little experience.
Finally, I wouldn’t use Ritchie Torres’ support as all that much evidence of anything. Individual politicians support candidates for a lot of reasons including personal connection and ambition to get a role in an administration, not just policy. I don’t know Torres’ reasons and don’t want to impugn his motives, but it isn’t persuasive that Yang’s policies are necessarily best for his constituents.
I am a former resident of New York, consider myself a progressive, and generally like Andrew Yang and find him more funny than offensive. However, this article didn't really come off as a great defense for him.
First, the sweeping generalizations about the progressives just seem like a bit much. I don't feel a subgroup to the greater progressive left should be really be framed as representing the views of the entire progressive left.
Second, I gave Yang a chance when he was running for president, but I found some of him unappealing, frustrating, and overall unserious. His mayoral campaign has been an improvement, though.
Some of the things he does kind of make me feel he is not ideologically disciplined. The first politician I knocked on doors for was Barrack Obama. There were a lot of things he said I disagreed with. A lot of decisions he made I didn't like. However, he seemed like a serious person that reached the conclusions he did after serious deliberation. On the other hand, Andrew Yang comes off to me as someone saying shit in the moment, which gives me pause. Criticizing left-wing messaging is one thing, but I often felt he was acting in bad faith. For example, the appearances on right-wing media criticizing the left's identity politics in 2019, yet now he uses identity politics messaging on the campaign trail. He said one of his motivations for running for president was that he didn't feel he met politicians who really cared about the issues facing regular people. Yet, he mentions Cory Booker as one of his good friends. He complained that American society was too unforgiving when a comedian denied a job on SNL because of past racist comments. Yet, on the campaign trail, he takes issue with a racist caricature of him (which he should have, I agree with him on this). So I think it is essential to acknowledge differences between presidential candidate Yang and NYC Mayoral candidate Yang.
My interactions with his campaign people and Yang himself a couple of times left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't need a candidate to be "woke" (I don't even know what that word means anymore, to be honest). Still, there a numerous civil rights issues facing people of color, and Yang's people seem to think that his economic policies, especially what seemed like a slapped-together UBI policy, were a panacea. Him being an upbeat, optimistic polularist sometimes works. Still, him being constantly surprised at information voters were telling him about how bad certain things were for them was not a good look for Yang. It was at best frustrating, at worse condescending. If you start talking about UBI when I ask about voting rights, you lost me. I think the Yang Gang were just as out of touch in their own way. Just like some of the activists left, they often criticize.
Also, I am a black man that lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Harlem during the Bloomberg. I have no issue with the NYPD budget staying the same in an effort to fight crime, especially violent crime because the harmful effects of crime affect minority communities the most. However, the NYPD needs a lot of oversight, or they will operate as a racist, oppressive street gang that doesn't respect many of the minority residents they are sworn to protect. Getting my constitutional rights violated constantly was not fun, nor was having a gun in my face because they mistook me for someone else. My concern with Yang as mayor is his habit of courting right-leaning support and doing what is politically convenient for him will lead him to have a blind spot with the NYPD. If the NYPD can get the crime figures where he wants them, he will not hold them accountable. That is a significant worry for me.
Again, I generally like Yang and think he has some good ideas. But I think people a justified to have concerns about him and his judgment. Yang entered the race with a large amount of name recognition and a built-in fan base. Yet only being able to win a primary because of a larger weak field, abandoning much of your previous political messaging, and a unique primary system working in your favor doesn't seem like a major endorsement of Andrew Yang's politics.
I'm skeptical and but hopeful. I told my mother she should vote for him over Adams. I hope the right instincts kick in at the right time, and he does not do anything stupid while in office.
The point about progressives speaking like they are appealing to program managers at funds is super interesting. A while ago Perry Bacon Jr. wrote an article talking about how you determine if a leader actually speaks for the community they represent, saying it’s tricky to tell but you should think about who they are accountable to. It definitely sounds like Yang and Adams talk like they want to be accountable to the people of NYC, not just their self-selected peers. I wonder if a big challenge for progressives now is to figure out how to make sure their leaders are accountable to the masses.
Here we go again. Only 50 years after the New York City fiscal crisis, we seem to have forgotten that you can’t erect a comprehensive welfare state on a municipal basis, cash-driven or not, because you don’t have sovereignty and the tax base can easily flee. There is a reason that the successes have been Federal programs.
Most of the mayoral candidates (Yang included) are very specific in their ideas about how to spend city tax money on social welfare, but pretty vague or unrealistic on where the money is going to come from. or on how the budget will do this spending while also supporting the commonweal for the great majority of the City’s residents. Until the latest string of atrocities in the subway, most of them also cared more about being seen as sufficiently anti-police than about dealing with the creeping breakdown in law and order in the City.
Yet those two things - the economy and security - are going to be virtually the only important things in the next Mayor’s term. Maintaining any kind of progressive vision depends utterly on success in handling those two things. I can’t see Yang doing that. Instead I see a lot of small-bore stuff that gets some attention because it's out of the box. It merely goes to build his brand.
"At many times, it feels like the point of the progressive movement in 2021 isn’t to gain power and then enact reforms to ameliorate suffering, but rather to impress each other by saying the most inoffensive words in the most inoffensive order and then if you predictably lose in a landslide, so what, because everybody who didn’t agree with you from the start is racist anyway."
This so true, and it drives me nuts. Yesterday I talked to an older progressive mayor who had been inspired to go into politics by the civil rights movement. In describing his work he immediately talked about how he had been steadily accruing power. That's when I knew I liked the guy.
UBI made a lot more sense as a proposal from Yang the presidential candidate than from Yang the mayoral candidate. As it now stands, his municipal UBI isn't universal. It's only for the poor, so it creates exactly the kind of cliff-edge disincentive that a real UBI would avoid. (There are understandable reasons of cost not to make the program universal--but again that's a reason UBI should rely on the federal tax base, not the tax base of a single city.)
I don't really think aggressive income redistribution can work at the local level, so the candidates in this or any other municipal race ought to be judged by their positions on other issues.
To volunteer for Kathryn Garcia, go to kh4.nyc/phonebank
Overall good article. But, I don't think that you can really compare a one time stimulus check going to 95% of people to a means tested annual check going to 5% of people in terms of popularity.
Does Slow Boring (or anyone else) have a rank list of the five NYC mayoral candidates I should vote for?
Currently thinking Garcia, Yang, Adams, ???, ???
Wow and here I thought Slow Boring was a Garcia blog... this institution is in disarray!
Lol progressive don’t want to win. They just want to be as inoffensive as possible. Fun stuff
Good article Marc, here are a couple reactions from your local anti-Yang progressive:
First, while the vacant lot proposal sounds good, Yang himself seems pretty skeptical of most taxes increases, not just the lobbying firm running his campaign: https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/04/01/yang-cautions-against-taxing-the-rich-in-front-of-pro-business-group-1371337
Second, I think you're making a quite unfair comparison to Biden with your use of the "nothing would fundamentally change" quote. It seems pretty clear in context that Biden was talking about the living standards of the wealthy people in the room (who Biden was and is planning to tax to pay for various progressive causes that will raise standards of living overall).
Totally irrelevant, but I love the phrase "trapezoidal program"
I don’t live in NYC so I haven’t been paying super close attention to the details of this race, but you’ve done a pretty good job moving my vague intuition that Yang is bad into a vague intuition that maybe Yang is good. Also I’m shocked that Yang is not even nearly as rich as Bernie or Warren were; it’s amazing the way narratives get constructed around candidates that have little bearing on the facts.
In general I’ve been struggling so much with people who call themselves progressives lately. I used to be one, and I really don’t feel like I’ve changed much, but what that word means feels like it’s changed around me. Definitely feeling this here in San Francisco where I think it’s hard to argue that the “progressives” on the Board of Supervisors are anything other than its most conservative members in terms of their complete resistance to any change in the status quo. Interesting to see something similar happening in NYC and across the country.
Sanders had a clear path to victory in both primaries (in a "this might work" sense not a "sure thing" sense), and very clear plans for how to govern differently than a centrist Democrat, especially on foreign policy. Warren's path to victory made sense on its own terms (tho' it was clearly based on mistaken assumptions), and she also had a very clear sense of what she could make the federal government do. In Congress AOC stands for a clear set of positions and moves the conversation in her direction.
The NYC municipal left seems mostly to be interested in talking a certain way. They don't *want* to win (look at the Morales campaign falling apart in a symbolic fight about unionizing jobs that will be gone in June), they don't plan to do anything different from De Blasio if they do (who is also on "the left" for whatever that's worth). If they had the least sense of urgency about what they claim to care about they'd be alarmed by Eric Adams. Instead they are offended by Yang, without understanding why he is popular or making any real effort to stop him.