11/15/24: Andrew Yang GOES OFF On Democrats After Landslide Loss
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Very lucky this morning to be joined by the one and only Andrew Yang, a man who scarcely needs an introduction, but for those who are not, you know. Of course, yeah. Former presidential candidate, of course, co-chair of the Forward Party. It's always great to see you, Andrew. Good to see you, man.

It's great to be here. Wish it was under different circumstances. I take it we're going to be debriefing the Trump landslide. Yeah, well, I mean, you're one of those people who's in a position to say, hey, I told you so, because you got behind Dean Phillips, who was out there saying, listen, guys, Biden is too old. Like, it doesn't have to be me. Just do something other than Joe Biden. How critical do you think it was that Biden stayed in the race for as long as he did?

Joe Biden essentially delivered the white house back to Donald Trump by not getting out of the way in January and full credit to Dean for risking his career. The Dems in true Demi fashion decided to malign him, primary him, uh, get him out of the picture because they were more offended that someone was actually cutting the line than making the right case for the country. Uh, he was correct. Then Joe Biden ends up dropping out less than six months later, uh,

And it was a train wreck. If they'd had a primary in January, you could have seen a very, very competitive ticket emerge. Let's call it Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer. You then have two of the three crucial swing states, probably

in your column, you win Wisconsin and you win the whole thing, but we'll never know because instead it was Joe, Joe, Joe all the way. And if you can send some emotion in my voice, we should all be ticked off, particularly Dean Phillips, because Dean Phillips was right all along. Can I

Can I ask you just a little bit more about that, Andrew? Because, you know, there's been reporting that came out after Biden had that disastrous debate that was like, yeah, donors had seen this was really not good. He had some meeting with congressional leaders like a long time ago where he couldn't finish his sentences. Nancy Pelosi had to jump in and then they just stopped having those meetings altogether. So this had all happened before Dean jumped in and was saying, guys, come on, I'm pulling the alarm bell like you have to do something. So how

I just want to know behind the scenes, like what was going on? Were they in denial? They just thought that they could cover it up. What was the thought process behind the scenes to the best of your knowledge? Oh yeah, it was common knowledge. And there were people saying to Dean, I agree with you. I'm glad you're doing this, but then they would be mum in public. And the truth is that

The rank and file Dem officeholder cared more about their place in the totem pole than whether the party was on track to win in November. That's the disease of this current system is that, look, you know, I've got my career progression. I've got my entire jam. What happens to the country? What happens to the people, families, communities? A distant, distant secondary or tertiary consideration.

That is absolutely devastating. That is really. Andrew, I wanted to talk to you more about this loss and kind of where things go from here. What is your like what is your theory of some of the different ways that the Democrats got it wrong?

You know, I was joking that instead of calling themselves the Democrats, they should start calling themselves the selectors. Because if you'd actually had a real competitive primary, you're not in this mess. They still even had a chance to have a hurried primary when Joe dropped out in July. And instead, it was just the elevation of Kamala. I made a list of recommendations for the Democratic Party.

in Politico a few days ago that I say in the piece they will totally ignore these. One of them is to make Dean Phillips the chair of the DNC as the only person who had the integrity to stake his career on what was right for the country. Another is apologize to Bernie Sanders for sandbagging him in 2016.

In my opinion, if Bernie is the nominee, then Trump never becomes president in 2016. So there are a bunch of things that you'd hope that they would take from this, but you don't actually have any optimism that they will, because the dynamic I described before is that there are now various people jockeying to be the party's nominee in 28. And again, it's about them and their place in the party and not necessarily Bernie.

preventing this loss. I mean, it was a landslide loss that, as my friend Dean Phillips said, was both predictable and preventable. Yes, absolutely. Well, I think there's a few things I want to pick up on there from your comments. I want to come back to your assessment that Bernie would have won in 2016, because you and Bernie don't have exactly the same ideologies. I'm curious about your analysis there, which of course I agree with, but I want to hear your perspective on that. But the one thing I wanted to ask you about first is, it's also a real indictment of

Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, these people who could have jumped into a Democratic primary and really forced the issue. And yeah, it would have been tough and people would have been mad at them or whatever. But if you've got the governor of California, the governor of Michigan, some actual heavy hitters in the Democratic primary, it makes it much more difficult to just affect

cancel the primary, which is what they truly did. Obviously, they had no debates. And on certain states, they just literally canceled the primary and blocked Marianne and Dean and Cenk and anyone else from getting on the ballot. So how much of an indictment do you see this as, you know, the people who are supposed to be the big star players coming up in the Democratic Party and their own career ambition and cowardice when it came down to it?

Yeah, it's not very presidential to just be like, oh, maybe I'll just wait until I have the blessing of the powers that be. And certainly Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker are well known to have had campaigns in waiting. But as someone who ran for president, guys, if you wait for the right time, there may never be a right time. You know what the right time is? The right time for the freaking country, not necessarily your professional prospects. Again, it's one reason why Dean Phillips

has my eternal admiration because he clearly did not have his professional, his political future in mind. And his career has been ended as a result politically, though you guys think that he could easily rise like a phoenix, which he could because everyone now knows that.

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he did the right thing. But that's unusual in American politics. We have a system that rewards cowardice and conformity and careerism and will punish courage. And that's one reason we're in this mess. Yeah. And Andrew, one of the things that you were originally, one of the ways a lot of people heard about you was from the Joe Rogan podcast. There's been a lot of Rogan discourse around this. I know you've said that

that Kamala should have gone on Joe Rogan. But what do you think that the shunning of Rogan, not even just necessarily by the party, but even by Kamala Harris herself, what does that say about the Democratic loss that led to Donald Trump? No, when she didn't go on Rogan, I thought to myself, either they have a really big lead in their private polling, or this is a massive mistake.

And one of the reasons why, in my view, the Democrats lost this race is that there has been this attack of people that are on people that are outside of their orthodoxy. And certainly Joe Rogan has been, you know, mercilessly attacked. I've taken, you know, a couple of slings and arrows like, who knows, they might even have hit you guys just for fun. Pretty much anyone who's

It was like outside of the machine. And it turns out that most of us are outside of the machine. But that doesn't mean that, you know, like to me, Joe Rogan would have been completely fair and inquisitive and, you know,

open-minded if Kamala and Tim Walz had come on, it would have been a massive boost for their campaign. And the fact that they didn't come on, to me, again, speaks to the careerism and the risk aversion. It's like you look at it and you think objectively, OK, if we're trying to win, you should do this. But let's not make any mistakes. Don't want anyone to look bad.

That's a great way to lose. Yeah, although, you know, I mean, to be honest with you, the more devastating point is that they may have actually made the right decision because I'm not sure that she does hold up well over the course of a two, three hour conversation. And when she had her weakest moments was actually when she was being asked just to talk about herself like, hey, who are you? What are your values? You know, it was like, oh, I didn't study for this one. So I'm not sure they actually made the wrong. You have a primary bingo.

That's the real core of the problem. So true. But just to get back, you know, lastly to your analysis that you think Bernie would have defeated Trump in 2016, the DNC should have moved Havana to block him from ascending to the Democratic nomination. You know, I have my analysis of why that could be the case. And of course, we'll never know for sure. But I am curious your thought process that leads you to that analysis.

One of the interesting things about having been a candidate in this context, Crystal, is there are times when a person and a campaign meets the moment. And Bernie was the person of the moment in 2016. He just had a ton of popular energy. I...

Donated to him. I know I heard him speak and I was like, oh, my gosh, like this guy's spot on. Like, I can't not donate. So I donated to Bernie's campaign in 16. He just had the will of the people behind him. And standing against him was the Clinton machine. And by the way, if you think about the 16 primary, it's like, why was it just Bernie?

and Hillary. It was because the word went out among the Dems. That's right. If you run against Hillary, we're going to shiv you. It's a career ender. You run against Joe, it's a career ender. We're going to shiv you. So Bernie was the only person, again, with the courage and patriotism and principle and said, hang it. You guys can't intimidate me out of this. I'm going to run. And he had the will of the people. And then if you'd had him be

Become the Democratic nominee in my opinion, but by the way There are a lot of folks who migrated from Bernie to Trump over the last number of years. Yes, in large part because the like the Energy is like look you're not an establishment tool I'm into it, you know by the way like there were a bunch of Trumpers who supported me because Everyone knows you would never send the magical Asian man from the future if you were like, you know of the Machine

It's like pretty much if you're not of the machine, we'll take a look at you if you're a rank-and-file working-class voter in this country, and Bernie had that. Yeah, I remember doing monologues at the time about how much crossover support that you had amongst Trump supporters. I remember I had like 40% at one point. So as somebody who actually was able to get some—

Trump's support. And clearly that didn't work out so well for the Democrats this time. At a structural level, not just with Dean, with the DNC, the consultants and all of that, what do you think should happen? They should be clean house and we should elect new leaders. Is it a primary process or is it even deeper? You've talked about third parties.

I think it's deeper. And if you look at the numbers as the math guy, the Democrats will probably not have any chance to be competitive in the U.S. Senate in terms of holding the majority for the foreseeable future. Just there are more red states than blue states. If you look at each map, it's tough. So if you are someone who wants any kind of real competition and dynamism and for our democracy,

country to be able to solve some of these problems. You're going to need a different approach to politics. You had someone like Dan Osborne, who I hope you guys had on. Oh, we did. So Dan Osborne put deep red Nebraska in play and ran 14 points ahead of Kamala in the state. You know, Evan McMullin did something similar in Utah. The fact is they're

There are many, many races around the country where people will not vote for either the Democrat or the Republican. And so you need a different approach. And that's what the Ford Party is making happen by backing independence.

and reform-minded people in each party. But this blue-red thing ends in acrimony, tears, problems not being solved, et cetera. And that's the math. Well, I love the idea of you getting behind future, like, Dan Osborne-style candidates because even though he came up a little short, I mean, to put Nebraska

Yeah, that's right. He forced McConnell to spend millions there. That's right. And not to defend. He actually may have ended up saving Jackie Rosen, for example, because that forced Republicans to have to take that race seriously and come in with a bunch of cash, etc. So I think that's a really exciting and interesting model for the future. Andrew, just tell people where they can follow your work and your analysis.

Sure. If you just go to Andrew Yang on most social media platforms or we can go to forwardparty.com and see what we're doing. We had 25 office holders win. We are the biggest third party in the country by resources, which I wish was saying more than it actually is. But hey, you know, we passed the Greens.

The Libertarians. There you go. We actually do have some really estimable people coming our way because everyone's fed up. Like, this system's not going to work. You need a viable third party, and we're building it. Yeah. I mean, another big disappointment for me on Election Day was a bunch of the ranked-choice

voting ballot initiatives failed, which I think is really unfortunate because I do think that's a key way to help to build, you know, strength outside of the two-party system. But we'll have you back to talk about all of that and the path forward there as well. Andrew, always great to see you. Good to see you, man. Thanks, guys. Great being here. Yeah, our pleasure.

This holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts. Tickets to see their favorite artists live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together.

or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every fan at LiveNation.com slash gifts. That's LiveNation.com slash gifts.

City Center, D.C. is the perfect place to celebrate the holiday season. Brighten up your holiday shopping underneath the twinkling lights of Palmer Alley or taste the holiday cheer in one of our delicious restaurants and eateries. City Center, the destination that celebrates you, your individual style, your many different tastes, where your creativity is applauded and everyone is welcome. Visit City Center, D.C. in the heart of downtown D.C. this holiday season.

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