Nicely done. I don't know what's happened to "progressive" politics, but IMHO it's really bad. To quote you,
"Here at Slow Boring, we’ve written on defunding the police a couple times, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. But on top of that, I also don’t think it’s a progressive idea, and the fact that it became one and somehow can’t unbecome one points to the biggest problem in the progressive movement: its extremely recently enshrined, yet unshakeable orthodoxies."
Amen! "Defund the police" is a dumb slogan at so many different levels.
I'm a geezer, came of age during the 1960s. The Vietnam war was a terrible mistake, but I still remember the ways that the young protesters screwed up their own putative goals. 1: A popular chant was "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh; Vietnam is gonna win!" 2: A small but significant fraction of demonstrators were waving VietCong flags and burning American flags. A tiny fraction of the protesters sincerely believed (or hoped) that they could overthrow the government. A perhaps larger but still tiny fraction were agents provocateur of diverse persuasions. I'd say the large majority were hotheads, dangerous and naive fools.
What happened to the notion that in a liberal democracy, the goal is to win the approval of a majority of the voters?
Not gonna lie: part of my soft spot for Andrew Yang is my desire to (innocently) ask Chinese friends: hey, when do you suppose the son of immigrants has a shot at the mayoralty of Shanghai?
Different governments do different things. I would argue that running on UBI *at the local level* shows that you are a fundamentally unserious candidate who doesn't understand the many, many things that the NYC government does or the real fiscal constraints that it faces.
On taxes, it's also notable that Yang proposed the biggest single tax increase in the presidential primary field! The payroll tax hikes in the Sanders and Warren M4A plans might have come close, but the VAT probably would have raised more.
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.
Also no normal gay person was offended by Yang's remarks at Stonewall. (He talked about re-opening gay bars at an event at a famous gay bar! My God!). He was speaking to a group of gay *senior Democratic party operatives who hate his guts.* Christine Quinn was offended but she'd be offended by anything he says or does. Of course it was up to the media to decide how to react to this.
I'm a Garcia #1, Yang #2 voter for now, but the reaction to Yang strikes me as completely crazy.
This may be dumb, but given that Stonewall Dems are literally named after a gay bar (and the riots that happened there) It was funny to me to hear them argue that gay bars aren't important.
If I thought Yang was somehow worse for Black trans teens than the others I'd hold that against him. This was a bunch of professional Democratic operatives and fundraiser types who were committed to other candidates & just looking for an excuse to be offended by Yang.
He even said our vibrant gay community contributes to the NYC culture scene and makes it a more attractive tourist destination, I can't imagine anything more homophobic than that.
“He tweeted his love of New York ‘bodegas’ with a video of what looked like a capacious supermarket. He reminisced about waiting ‘in,’ not ‘on,’ line at a ‘NY restaurant,’ Shake Shack.
“To that can be added the following: Yang complained that the city is not enforcing rules against unlicensed street vendors (which felt like a dig against immigrants and the harmless yet colorful vibe they bring to the streets). He has said of fellow candidate Kathryn Garcia both that she has demonstrated incompetence by having served under Bill de Blasio and that he would hire her to manage his government for him. He has blanked out when asked basic questions about NYPD reforms, how he would pay for his fanciful idea to wrest control of the subway system from New York State, and what his favorite Jay-Z song is.
“And here was the capper: Asked to name his favorite subway stop, Yang said, ‘Times Square.’ This was evidence of some next-level cluelessness; one of the things that binds all New Yorkers together is that we all hate tourists and the wellspring from which they emerge, Times Square. The remark reinforced the perception that Yang, who grew up in the suburbs north of the city and went to boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy, is not a true member of our strange New York City tribe.”
Yang does really seem like a nice guy, and if he’s elected I wish him success because I truly love New York City. But nice doesn’t necessarily get you much in the sort of NYC politics that its mayors have to negotiate.
When I first moved to NYC, I, a kid who grew up in a small town in New England, took it all in like drinking from a firehose. One thing I noticed while learning my way around on the streets and on the subway was that most native New Yorkers knew next to nothing about it. They, most of them, knew how to get from their neighborhood to their workplace, but weren’t too curious beyond that.
You may call that, not unreasonably, but uncharitably, provincialism. Yet that is the mode of thought of almost all people.
If you believe it’s more “un-charming” than other examples, fine. But I know better.
This and all the silly stories just scream "clueless out-of-towner." Not significant in themselves, but because they tie into the general idea that he might not have the chops to actually govern the city that he doesn't quite understand.
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.
I appreciate your response and your insight here. I'm not a New Yorker at all, but I was a supporter during the presidential campaign and was involved in helping with the Melanated Council of Yang group and YouTube channel (I'm a black supporter myself in Mass). As for his mayoral run, I'm glad you see it as an improvement because I was afraid that there were a lot of ppl who liked him in the presidential who didn't like his "less progressive" mayoral campaign or his very touchy comments on Israel / Palestine.
Either way, I hope Yang wins and doesn't do anything stupid in office like you said!
Does Matt have more than one intern? It would be nice to see a Slow Boring pitch for Eric Adams, whose blend of hopelessly-unpopular-but-actually-popular ideas, mildly corrupt behavior in office and solid working-class appeal strikes me as something Max Weber would respect.
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.
Yang is proposing we give $1 billion to poor people. The budget is almost $100 billion https://www1.nyc.gov/site/omb/index.page . I don't see how the tax base would flee over that. And I agree it's not as easy for the city government to do welfare, but that's why it's good it's just cash!
I feel this is a complacent attitude. The City budget won't be $90+ billion when the post-Covid property tax reassessments and the income and business tax shortfalls hit the scene. Hard decisions will need to be made over basic stuff like schools, police, sanitation as well as the plethora of other social services (with its jobs) that the city provides. A $1 billion cash giveaway to a small fraction of the city population at a time when basic services are being cut will not be viewed well.
There has been a rash of gruesome and frightening slashings, pushings, and beatings in the subway for the past year. A week or two ago there were three of them in one day. Like the bad old days. With much arm-twisting the MTA has gotten the City to send more police into the system. For social justice reasons the police can't stake out the turnstiles any more, so they're stuck trying to run down potential criminals in the stations and on the trains. There will never be enough cops to do that effectively.
I've been following this race much more closely than my own city (Los Angeles)'s mayor race. I wonder what it says about me. (Currently tempted to donate to Garcia.)
One thing that stuck with me is David Weigel mentioned that in 2020, Yang appealed to a lot of people that weren't otherwise interested in politics or weren't all that progressive. I think that's a really good quality in a candidate, and it made me see him in a different light.
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.
Also an Ivy Leaguer! Good point. I vaguely recall there was one viral tweet from the primaries where some guy who had gone to middle school with Buttigieg bragged about once having dunked Buttigieg's head into a toilet. The tweet received a very large number of likes.
You'd think the middle school neanderthal vote would better fit a right-wing psych profile. Which has to make you wonder how many members of this particular subset of "progressives" are really all that progressive at heart, and how many of them will end up being David Horowitz.
Not sure about Yang, but with Buttigieg the progressive disdain was said to skew young, toward GenZ and millennials. Maybe what it really is is not-so-thinly-veiled "privilege or accomplishment envy." Ivy league schools have never been easy to get into it, but I'd imagine its now a good deal harder to gain entrance to one than it was for GenXers, or, needless to say, baby boomers. And, critically, in our increasingly "winner take all" society, it's perceived (accurately or not) that the advantages flowing from fancy school degrees are bigger (and thus more "unfair") than ever before. So, maybe a lot of it is resentment. (Which possibly might be overcome by a candidate who is truly uberwoke and hard-left, but otherwise he/she comes in for savaging).
For sure. And so you also see a lot of energy committed to advancing the notion that Ivy League admission is purely a sign of generational wealth or even flat-out cheating. So you see people start by citing problems with legacies and Jared Kushner types, but then sweep in all or nearly all admittees so as to blur the distinction between bribing the school with donations or getting a high SAT score. Both are portrayed, with a lot of hand-waving, as nothing more than different forms of cheating.
Buttigieg and Yang both grew up moderately affluent but obviously neither fits the "generational wealth" category at all. But that doesn't seem to affect their hateability quotients. Which would support your "accomplishment envy" thesis. I guess that shouldn't be surprising considering that so many left-wingers these days feel no compunction about opposing the interests of even *non-affluent* urban Asian immigrant families with high-achieving high school kids, although I don't think the left-wingers have gone so far as to define the immigrant families as enemies - they usually portray them more as dupes.
In principle a cop is even worse than a businessman for my comrades at the DSA. But Adams as a relatively conservative Black man who doesn't have a fancy education or appeal to voters with fancy educations. They never met somebody like him at college.
He doesn't compute for them, neither does the rather large slice of culturally conservative, low-income-but-not-destitute NYC politics he represents. The joke is that he runs Brooklyn! If there is one place besides Cambridge, MA where you think they'd get the local politics...
Nah - the absolute, vitriolic hate for Yang is because he’s an outsider. All these major candidates have spent years, if not decades, climbing a greasy pole to mayor - and now here swoops in a guy who’s never even voted in a mayoral election before, to take what’s rightfully “theirs”.
Nah - the absolute, vitriolic hate for Yang is because he’s an outsider. All these major candidates have spent years, if not decades, climbing a greasy pole to mayor - and now here swoops in a guy who’s never even voted in a mayoral election before, to take what’s rightfully “theirs”.
I think the left wing types tend to be the more obnoxious gatekeeping personalities and so when someone encroaches on their “turf” they get irrationally vicious. You saw it with Warren and you’re seeing it with Yang.
It’s weird in the Yang case because RCV means you don’t have to worry about a vote for Yang taking a vote away from Wiley or Morales. Honestly it just seems like it’s more about projecting an identity rather than actually wanting to capture political power. Like the cliche example of liking a band before they got big.
I think in that crowd the key is you have to be loudly contemptuous of other Ivy Leaguers and of the value of elite education in general. Which certainly can be done. But Yang is just a regular Ivy League alum who studied hard, majored in econ, and became an affluent normie white-collar professional. That makes him extremely hateable for them.
Nicely done. I don't know what's happened to "progressive" politics, but IMHO it's really bad. To quote you,
"Here at Slow Boring, we’ve written on defunding the police a couple times, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. But on top of that, I also don’t think it’s a progressive idea, and the fact that it became one and somehow can’t unbecome one points to the biggest problem in the progressive movement: its extremely recently enshrined, yet unshakeable orthodoxies."
Amen! "Defund the police" is a dumb slogan at so many different levels.
I'm a geezer, came of age during the 1960s. The Vietnam war was a terrible mistake, but I still remember the ways that the young protesters screwed up their own putative goals. 1: A popular chant was "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh; Vietnam is gonna win!" 2: A small but significant fraction of demonstrators were waving VietCong flags and burning American flags. A tiny fraction of the protesters sincerely believed (or hoped) that they could overthrow the government. A perhaps larger but still tiny fraction were agents provocateur of diverse persuasions. I'd say the large majority were hotheads, dangerous and naive fools.
What happened to the notion that in a liberal democracy, the goal is to win the approval of a majority of the voters?
"to impress each other by saying the most inoffensive words in the most inoffensive order"
did you mean the most offensive order?
Marc: A bit O/T, but did Matt see the news about K. Garcia topping a recent poll?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/kathryn-garcia-mayoral-interview
We saw it. Our understanding is that Emerson polls are not to be trusted. https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1290338998519463937?s=20 and https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1135943622044635145?s=20 . That being said, she is definitely surging!
Not gonna lie: part of my soft spot for Andrew Yang is my desire to (innocently) ask Chinese friends: hey, when do you suppose the son of immigrants has a shot at the mayoralty of Shanghai?
Totally irrelevant, but I love the phrase "trapezoidal program"
Different governments do different things. I would argue that running on UBI *at the local level* shows that you are a fundamentally unserious candidate who doesn't understand the many, many things that the NYC government does or the real fiscal constraints that it faces.
He's not running on UBI! He's running on a cash transfer to the poor
OK but still -- municipal government is the wrong place for cash transfers!
Hey Marc, as someone who worked on Yang's Presidential campaign I just want to thank you for getting out there and knocking doors for him.
On taxes, it's also notable that Yang proposed the biggest single tax increase in the presidential primary field! The payroll tax hikes in the Sanders and Warren M4A plans might have come close, but the VAT probably would have raised more.
Can Yang do his basic income unilaterally as mayor, or does it take city council, state government, or other approvals?
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.
Also no normal gay person was offended by Yang's remarks at Stonewall. (He talked about re-opening gay bars at an event at a famous gay bar! My God!). He was speaking to a group of gay *senior Democratic party operatives who hate his guts.* Christine Quinn was offended but she'd be offended by anything he says or does. Of course it was up to the media to decide how to react to this.
I'm a Garcia #1, Yang #2 voter for now, but the reaction to Yang strikes me as completely crazy.
This may be dumb, but given that Stonewall Dems are literally named after a gay bar (and the riots that happened there) It was funny to me to hear them argue that gay bars aren't important.
"Why didn't he talk about Black trans teens"?
If I thought Yang was somehow worse for Black trans teens than the others I'd hold that against him. This was a bunch of professional Democratic operatives and fundraiser types who were committed to other candidates & just looking for an excuse to be offended by Yang.
He even said our vibrant gay community contributes to the NYC culture scene and makes it a more attractive tourist destination, I can't imagine anything more homophobic than that.
From Kyle Smith at NR:
“He tweeted his love of New York ‘bodegas’ with a video of what looked like a capacious supermarket. He reminisced about waiting ‘in,’ not ‘on,’ line at a ‘NY restaurant,’ Shake Shack.
“To that can be added the following: Yang complained that the city is not enforcing rules against unlicensed street vendors (which felt like a dig against immigrants and the harmless yet colorful vibe they bring to the streets). He has said of fellow candidate Kathryn Garcia both that she has demonstrated incompetence by having served under Bill de Blasio and that he would hire her to manage his government for him. He has blanked out when asked basic questions about NYPD reforms, how he would pay for his fanciful idea to wrest control of the subway system from New York State, and what his favorite Jay-Z song is.
“And here was the capper: Asked to name his favorite subway stop, Yang said, ‘Times Square.’ This was evidence of some next-level cluelessness; one of the things that binds all New Yorkers together is that we all hate tourists and the wellspring from which they emerge, Times Square. The remark reinforced the perception that Yang, who grew up in the suburbs north of the city and went to boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy, is not a true member of our strange New York City tribe.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-unembarrassable-andrew-yang/
Yang does really seem like a nice guy, and if he’s elected I wish him success because I truly love New York City. But nice doesn’t necessarily get you much in the sort of NYC politics that its mayors have to negotiate.
NYC provincialism - the most (un) charming provincialism.
When I first moved to NYC, I, a kid who grew up in a small town in New England, took it all in like drinking from a firehose. One thing I noticed while learning my way around on the streets and on the subway was that most native New Yorkers knew next to nothing about it. They, most of them, knew how to get from their neighborhood to their workplace, but weren’t too curious beyond that.
You may call that, not unreasonably, but uncharitably, provincialism. Yet that is the mode of thought of almost all people.
If you believe it’s more “un-charming” than other examples, fine. But I know better.
It's all good. I guess the various shibboleths about what makes a "real" New Yorker are more interesting if you're from there.
I'm sorry, your top line complaint about Yang is that he says he "waits in line" like a normal person?
This and all the silly stories just scream "clueless out-of-towner." Not significant in themselves, but because they tie into the general idea that he might not have the chops to actually govern the city that he doesn't quite understand.
Do you believe I am a clueless out of tower?
No.
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.
I appreciate your response and your insight here. I'm not a New Yorker at all, but I was a supporter during the presidential campaign and was involved in helping with the Melanated Council of Yang group and YouTube channel (I'm a black supporter myself in Mass). As for his mayoral run, I'm glad you see it as an improvement because I was afraid that there were a lot of ppl who liked him in the presidential who didn't like his "less progressive" mayoral campaign or his very touchy comments on Israel / Palestine.
Either way, I hope Yang wins and doesn't do anything stupid in office like you said!
Wow and here I thought Slow Boring was a Garcia blog... this institution is in disarray!
Does Matt have more than one intern? It would be nice to see a Slow Boring pitch for Eric Adams, whose blend of hopelessly-unpopular-but-actually-popular ideas, mildly corrupt behavior in office and solid working-class appeal strikes me as something Max Weber would respect.
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.
Yang is proposing we give $1 billion to poor people. The budget is almost $100 billion https://www1.nyc.gov/site/omb/index.page . I don't see how the tax base would flee over that. And I agree it's not as easy for the city government to do welfare, but that's why it's good it's just cash!
I feel this is a complacent attitude. The City budget won't be $90+ billion when the post-Covid property tax reassessments and the income and business tax shortfalls hit the scene. Hard decisions will need to be made over basic stuff like schools, police, sanitation as well as the plethora of other social services (with its jobs) that the city provides. A $1 billion cash giveaway to a small fraction of the city population at a time when basic services are being cut will not be viewed well.
Nota New Yorker. What happened on the subway?
There has been a rash of gruesome and frightening slashings, pushings, and beatings in the subway for the past year. A week or two ago there were three of them in one day. Like the bad old days. With much arm-twisting the MTA has gotten the City to send more police into the system. For social justice reasons the police can't stake out the turnstiles any more, so they're stuck trying to run down potential criminals in the stations and on the trains. There will never be enough cops to do that effectively.
I've been following this race much more closely than my own city (Los Angeles)'s mayor race. I wonder what it says about me. (Currently tempted to donate to Garcia.)
One thing that stuck with me is David Weigel mentioned that in 2020, Yang appealed to a lot of people that weren't otherwise interested in politics or weren't all that progressive. I think that's a really good quality in a candidate, and it made me see him in a different light.
http://kg4.nyc/donate
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.
The vibe I get is a lot progressive dislike for Yang is highly similar to the progressive dislike for Buittigieg.
Also an Ivy Leaguer! Good point. I vaguely recall there was one viral tweet from the primaries where some guy who had gone to middle school with Buttigieg bragged about once having dunked Buttigieg's head into a toilet. The tweet received a very large number of likes.
You'd think the middle school neanderthal vote would better fit a right-wing psych profile. Which has to make you wonder how many members of this particular subset of "progressives" are really all that progressive at heart, and how many of them will end up being David Horowitz.
Whoa, I never heard of this. Can you post a link to the tweet? I'll look for it too
Not sure about Yang, but with Buttigieg the progressive disdain was said to skew young, toward GenZ and millennials. Maybe what it really is is not-so-thinly-veiled "privilege or accomplishment envy." Ivy league schools have never been easy to get into it, but I'd imagine its now a good deal harder to gain entrance to one than it was for GenXers, or, needless to say, baby boomers. And, critically, in our increasingly "winner take all" society, it's perceived (accurately or not) that the advantages flowing from fancy school degrees are bigger (and thus more "unfair") than ever before. So, maybe a lot of it is resentment. (Which possibly might be overcome by a candidate who is truly uberwoke and hard-left, but otherwise he/she comes in for savaging).
For sure. And so you also see a lot of energy committed to advancing the notion that Ivy League admission is purely a sign of generational wealth or even flat-out cheating. So you see people start by citing problems with legacies and Jared Kushner types, but then sweep in all or nearly all admittees so as to blur the distinction between bribing the school with donations or getting a high SAT score. Both are portrayed, with a lot of hand-waving, as nothing more than different forms of cheating.
Buttigieg and Yang both grew up moderately affluent but obviously neither fits the "generational wealth" category at all. But that doesn't seem to affect their hateability quotients. Which would support your "accomplishment envy" thesis. I guess that shouldn't be surprising considering that so many left-wingers these days feel no compunction about opposing the interests of even *non-affluent* urban Asian immigrant families with high-achieving high school kids, although I don't think the left-wingers have gone so far as to define the immigrant families as enemies - they usually portray them more as dupes.
In principle a cop is even worse than a businessman for my comrades at the DSA. But Adams as a relatively conservative Black man who doesn't have a fancy education or appeal to voters with fancy educations. They never met somebody like him at college.
He doesn't compute for them, neither does the rather large slice of culturally conservative, low-income-but-not-destitute NYC politics he represents. The joke is that he runs Brooklyn! If there is one place besides Cambridge, MA where you think they'd get the local politics...
Nah - the absolute, vitriolic hate for Yang is because he’s an outsider. All these major candidates have spent years, if not decades, climbing a greasy pole to mayor - and now here swoops in a guy who’s never even voted in a mayoral election before, to take what’s rightfully “theirs”.
Nah - the absolute, vitriolic hate for Yang is because he’s an outsider. All these major candidates have spent years, if not decades, climbing a greasy pole to mayor - and now here swoops in a guy who’s never even voted in a mayoral election before, to take what’s rightfully “theirs”.
I think the left wing types tend to be the more obnoxious gatekeeping personalities and so when someone encroaches on their “turf” they get irrationally vicious. You saw it with Warren and you’re seeing it with Yang.
It’s weird in the Yang case because RCV means you don’t have to worry about a vote for Yang taking a vote away from Wiley or Morales. Honestly it just seems like it’s more about projecting an identity rather than actually wanting to capture political power. Like the cliche example of liking a band before they got big.
No one thinks an Ivy League education is bad when they're talking about people that agree with them.
I think in that crowd the key is you have to be loudly contemptuous of other Ivy Leaguers and of the value of elite education in general. Which certainly can be done. But Yang is just a regular Ivy League alum who studied hard, majored in econ, and became an affluent normie white-collar professional. That makes him extremely hateable for them.