Entrepreneur and former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said that a “patronizing element” to Democratic Party messaging could be “hurting” its candidates’ chances for victory.
“Democrats have really done a very bad job at making many Americans feel like we are fighting for them,” Yang told Washington Post columnist Michele Norris in a video interview posted Wednesday after discussing Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s appeal to working-class voters. “They think we are fighting for people other than them or against them in some way. And it breaks my heart, because if we’re not standing up for the trucker, the waitress or the retail clerk, then who are we standing up for?”
“Democrats have this tendency to have a message out there, and then if you don’t like the message then it’s like, ‘Well, it’s your fault. There’s something wrong with you,'” he continued. “And I think that’s what a lot of the folks I’ve met on the trail have picked up on. There’s this patronizing element to a lot of what we say and do, an d it’s hurting us, and it’s wrong. It’s unproductive. It’s a great way to not win.”
Yang is scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday at 9 p.m. after originally not being asked. He told Norris he believes the argument for a change at the executive branch will be “an easy case for me to make.” (RELATED: ’42 Percent Of These Jobs Won’t Come Back’: Andrew Yang Predicts Permanent Job Loss Could Be ‘Almost Two Times The Great Recession’)
“How are we going to get out of this mess?” Yang said he would ask viewers. “Signing up for four more years of Trump is a completely irrational way of trying to get out of this mess.”
Yang’s own presidential campaign focused primarily on proposing a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for every American over 18-years-old.
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