Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced the creation of a new political party Tuesday, less than a month after announcing his departure from the Democratic Party.
Yang’s has dubbed his new political identity as the Forward Party, displaying the slogan “Not left. Not right. Forward.” Yang released a five-minute video explaining the party’s beliefs and priorities on Twitter, as well as launching a website for the party. Yang has yet to succeed in reaching elected office, first failing to obtain the Democratic 2020 nomination, and then failing again in his run for New York City mayor.
“Right now we have this two-sided duopoly that’s just clashing and clashing, and you may love one side more than the other, but you have to face facts that this system is not working,” Yang said in the video announcement, adding that political polarization in the U.S. is dividing families. “We’re getting more and more polarized in large part because the incentives of our political system, our media and our social media all are driving us against each other.” (RELATED: Democratic Candidate Andrew Yang Promises Government Crackdown On ‘Misinformation’)
Welcome to the Forward Party. Learn more at https://t.co/pHP4oLw6w4. @Fwd_Party #forward #forwardist pic.twitter.com/k385M45hdN
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 5, 2021
Yang identifies the party’s chief objectives as implementing open primaries and ranked-choice voting; adopting universal basic income; cultivating a “human-centered” economy; ensuring a fact-based and modernized government, as well as treating fellow Americans with “grace and tolerance.”
“What we’re in the midst of right now is one of the worst nightmares of our founding fathers,” Yang says. “They hated political parties. There’s nothing in the Constitution about any political party, and the duopoly would have been their worst nightmare come to life, because what they would’ve seen is factions that just clash over and over again and are susceptible to bad leadership.”
The Forward Party website also calls for imposing a term limit of 18 years for all members of Congress, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and ensuring that a person’s digital data is protected as a property right to increase privacy from tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. (RELATED: Andrew Yang ‘Breaking Up’ With Democrats)
Yang raised eyebrows during his candidacy in the 2020 Democratic primary with his calls for universal basic income and his criticism of the two-party system. He has made a name for himself by proposing numerous radical changes to the American system, most recently calling for Americans to be able to vote in elections from their phones.