Where We Are
Hello, I hope that your summer is going great.
If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend Scott Galloway’s recent TED Talk, and not just because I make a couple cameos. He hits on many themes of my presidential campaign concerning negative trends in the economy and our standard of living, particularly for young people. I often said on the trail, “If you’re young you are entirely justified in being either angry or sad, because we have left you with a real mess and also the bill.”
Things have gotten far worse for young people over the past five years, as our country has ramped up debt very significantly while making things like housing dramatically less affordable. It’s one of the great megatrends in my thinking over the last five years.
1. Things are getting progressively worse for most Americans based on affordability, and that needs to change;
2. Our institutions are designed to resist change in favor of the status quo that serves vested interests quite well; and
3. We need to build a movement that changes the institutions or goes around them if we are going to change #1.
During my presidential campaign we activated almost half a million donors and millions more who were eager to see something big change in favor of people. You are probably among that number if you’re reading this – thank you! Our campaign fell short, and now I’m grinding away at changing #2. Someone said to me today, “I just figured out why you’re going so heavy on ranked choice voting, and I’m on board.”
Every day, people come up to me and say “Run again!” in part because they are fed up by what we are getting. At the same time, if I had run again in this context I would likely do more harm than good. It’s one reason I was so glad to back Dean Phillips, who I saw as a responsible way to upgrade from a Biden versus Trump rematch and give us all a shot at a better future. Watching the way the media and the Democrats sidelined Dean was a stark reminder of #2 above, despite the fact that Dean was clearly benevolent and a Democrat in good standing before he made the decision to put country ahead of party.
Forward has now gotten behind candidates like John Avlon, John Curtis, Shelane Etchison and Adam Frisch, all of whom I’m very excited about. There are also local candidates in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida and around the country. I’m glad to do good where I can.
But the backdrop of Scott’s talk and my presidential campaign was of a system that has gotten increasingly dysfunctional and punitive for the average American and young people in particular. I was with Tim Ryan from Ohio last week, and he put it like this: “If I lost my job at the plant or my town has been going downhill for years and you come and tell me GDP has had a good couple quarters, it doesn’t make me want to vote for you.” Ohio of course has gone from a swing state to quite red in the past decade-plus.
I think that Trump would make a disastrous President, much worse than he was last time. I’m angry and sad that he may be on the verge of returning, in part because the Democrats have set the stage for it.
What do you do in an age of declining institutions? You take them over if you can, and build new ones as quickly as possible.
To check out what Forward is doing including the candidates above, click here. If you are in position to donate click here – we are very grateful for your support!
For those of you who follow the podcast, we are doing a special Q&A episode – submit your question at mailbag@andrewyang.com and we will answer the good ones on air.
My TED Talk is now up to 1.4 million views and counting - thanks for helping get it out there!
