Yang, who ran for President last year is now the runaway leader in the race for theDemocratic nomination to run for Mayor of the City Of New York….
Bill DeBlasio won’t be on the ballot….
He’s term limited….
Politico is out with a piece that points to a non-Progressive Wang a little while ago….
(This might NOT slow Wang’s appeal with voters….Remember the ‘Big Apple has had 22 years of Republicans mayor’s in Giuliani and Bloomberg…Leaning a little to Right might not hurt even among Democrats and even some Trump voters?…But then it MIGHT…..)
Andrew Yang’s road to fame was paved with right-wing podcasts.
Before he joined the New York City mayor’s race in January or even appeared on a presidential debate stage during the Democratic primary, Yang reached an audience of millions through an unconventional venue: shows that promoted a strongly anti-progressive point of view.
During one interview last May, Yang said, “There are many elements of Trump voters that I completely get and empathize with” before describing people who had become disaffected with corruption and “checked out of politics.”
In another he suggested automating the jobs of fast-food workers, who would be embroiled in a local push for unionization just months later.
And during a show in June 2019, he said the Democratic Party “needs to try and gravitate away from identity politics,” calling it a “stupid way to try and win elections,” admitting he had very little interest in engaging in New York politics at the time.
Yang told Dave Rubin — whose podcast The Rubin Report has interviewed white nationalists, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, anti-Islamic activists and anti-feminist media personalities — that he “came of age during the first Clinton term” and considered himself a Democrat.
“I wasn’t actively involved in local politics and I was living in New York, and as you know, New York is so blue that there isn’t that much to be engaged with, politically,” Yang said.
Yang also made appearances on The Ben Shapiro Show, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Tucker Carlson Tonight to promote his candidacy. By then these shows had built a reputation as highly critical of progressive policies and “woke” culture — a viewpoint that had built them a collective, nationwide audience of millions.
His appearances were the most high-profile examples of a history on the campaign trail espousing views that were antithetical to today’s current Democratic party — part of a strategy to win back white, working-class workers who swung for Trump in 2016. At that time his views weren’t too distant from other centrist candidates, who shied away from embracing progressive issues, particularly those related to “culture war” topics.
But New York City Democratic politics demand a different script…..