Copying and pasting some thoughts I wrote out on Twitter cuz I don't feel like rephrasing it for here.
This guy is so hard to pin down. On the one hand, he does talk about issues that are important and even forward-thinking, but he seems to do so without command of the topic or any grasp of how legislation works.
In other words, he's pretty much the average American layman who hasn't actually worked in politics.
I remember during his Presidential campaign, it seemed like almost every issue he talked about related back to UBI. As if he did not have a complex understanding of how poverty or systemic injustice works other than “the absence of money.”
I should amend my earlier statement. My take on that is that he's got a singular laser-like focus on his one big solution, and by golly did he push for it and tried to connect to it in every way. But I'm not sure if his lack of a complex understanding of how those problems work is really all that much more shallow than any other person, or even most of our elected officials.
He’s more like a layman. A lot of the things he espouses are rooted in the abstract of what *could* be done as opposed to what *can* be done. And not in a “this idea is pie-in-the-sky” kind of way, more like “well if I think this is a good idea, it must be a good idea” He doesn’t understand legislation, he doesn’t understand government, he doesn’t understand governing. He admits that he’s never voted for mayor because he has “taken city government for granted.” How can you run for President while not having an appreciation for local politics? It seems like it’s a lot more vain than altruistic. It’s like he wants the credit for being the genius who figured out that poverty is bad. He doesn’t want to govern, he wants to be a movie star. It always rubbed me the wrong way that he would run for Pres w/o govt experience. After we elected Donald Trump, who ran for POTUS for the personal glory without understanding how government or legislating works, YOU’RE the guy who should succeed him? Someone who has virtually the same resume as Trump? That takes a lot of ambition. And not in a good way. I’ve always been skeptical of Yang and this article further proves that he may not really understand politics or issues outside of a very elementary grasp of things. It’s like he’s arrived at the correct answer without doing the work. It’s very technocratic.
Sure, but he's hardly the first one to do this, he's just the first one who's used this technocratic style. Trump did it, Perot did it, a
bunch of other businessmen did it
before. Yang's difference is that he comes off as nonconfrontational and easy-going, and speaks in numbers and plans that look like they either came out of Reddit or
The Atlantic. He lacks populist anger, is a conventional Democrat social liberal, and speaks in abstractions rather than fire. But he's not too dissimilar from other political laymen who came before.
I don't see what's so hard to understand. He's just a unique variation on a theme.
I do think his easy-going nature makes him affable and come off as an idealist, positive qualities, rather than someone who's got a bone to pick, or is seeking power for the sake of it.
