I kinda liked Inslee. He’s be my third place pick if he was still in the race.
It has nothing to do with what he’s right or wrong about. I don’t trust him, and my distrust grows the more I learn about him. His entire resume sounds like a bunch of borderline grifty bullshit. It’s all business douche nonsense that only serves to hide the fact that he actually hasn’t accomplished much of anything in his life.
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Not saying anything about Yang in particular, and maybe I’m just an idealist, but I don’t really care about someone’s experience working in government. I want the smartest person with the best ideas to improve the country. By default, that person would be someone who would be surrounded by competent people that could help them achieve those ideas. The experience of that person in government isn’t particularly relevant to this task.
I don’t understand how experience in government isn’t important to running that very government. If anyone has ever had extensive experience in anything, anything at all, especially in a large organization, they should appreciate that experience is actually really valuable. In government or in corporations so often people bring in someone they think is a rock star from some outside industry and, well, it really shows that they don’t know shit about the new organization and it’s also important that they don’t have any personal connections with the people inside doing the work.
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We are fortunate Elon can’t run and Zuckerberg is too toxic, because there’s a chunk of the electorate who would gush over them running for president.
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Perhaps it is a question of trade-offs, right? Like, candidate A has government experience but is meh on the issues you care about. Candidate B is great on the issues, but has no experience. I’d prefer B, but it sounds like you’d prefer A.
Obviously the ideal person would have both, but that is rare.
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I think with the exception of being elected senator from a safe blue state his background is at least as impressive as Obama’s. The dude is in his early 40’s and has sold a successful company, started a successful non profit and written two genuinely good books that weren’t about himself.
For sure it’s a combination. Yang >>>> Biden. But there’s no way I’m picking Yang over Bernie or Liz or probably not Castro and I’m not even sure about Booker, Harris, or Pete. In that poll for third place, I did entertain picking Yang, but went with Castro.
Obama was pretty low in the qualifications department, but he was an expert on the US Constitution, which is pretty relevant to being POTUS. He also put in a lot of time demonstrating, if not proving conclusively, that he wasn’t in it for some kind of grift. He was legitimately a dedicated public servant. And while everyone running for POTUS is probably some kind of egomaniac, he didn’t have the hubris to start at the top. Far from it.
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This is actually an aspect of the Presidency that I wish would get discussed more during campaigns, but I’m not sure how best to do it. The President has to oversee a ton of people and can’t actually oversee everything, so they have to rely on this strange brew of civil servants and political appointees to actually get stuff done on a day to day basis. Who will they pick to staff these position and how will they manage the information flow seem like really big questions that receive little scrutiny beyond soundbites about picking the best people…
For example, if the major candidates had one “silver bullet” appointment where they could pick an incredibly competent, extraordinarily effective head who would get the best possible results out of the agency, where would they spend the bullet?
Trump - DOJ to obstruct justice
Bernie - probably HHS in order to either implement new laws or improve current system as much as possible via administrative rule making.
Warren - something related to financial regulation, maybe the SEC or FTC?
Yang - something like labor or education and have them run point on workforce modernization / retraining?
Booker - probably HUD or maybe EPA (he talks a lot about environmental justice…)
Castro - I want to say DHS, but I’m not sure if that actually aligns with his top priorities or if he has just gotten the most coverage for his immigration positions.
Having a hard time coming up with answers for the other candidates which is either a sign that I’m not paying attention or that they haven’t really defined their top priorities.
Yang is on record saying he would not run the govt like a business because they are different things. He is smart enough to recognize that at least.
Anyone questioning his intelligence should question their own.
Also Warren told him she is half way done with his book and is on record saying UBI might be necessary in the last week.
Yang is winning even if he doesn’t win the nomination.
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Bill Perkins likes Yang and Perkins is against taxing wealthy people and retweets the stuff from some guy named John Stossel. So not sure how I should feel about Yang when the Libertarian crowd likes him. They still seem to believe in an utopia of a fair capitalism where everyone plays by the same rules where you dont need government to ensure an even playing field.
I do think the Yang campaign is a good thing.
I agree with everything until that last sentence. The right answer is ignoring ideology and doing what works in all cases.
It wasn’t his company. It was founded by his friend who invited Yang to be CEO years later. The value of his non-profit is very non-obvious to me and it sounds like a bunch of bullshit. Well intentioned bullshit perhaps, but still bullshit.
Maybe his books are good. I haven’t read them.
Books are excellent and the nonprofit worked pretty well and isn’t bullshit. Your scamdar is returning false positives on this guy.
Is it really that hard to understand why someone who likes Bernie (“I want the system to work for the people, not the millionaires and billionaires”), might be skeptical of Yang, whose nonprofit was based on the idea of helping places like Detroit and Baltimore by bringing in young venture capitalists? Those views do seem a little hard to reconcile.
I have Bernie 1 Yang 2 and Warren 3 this week.
Each have positives and negatives and for me, Bernie is pretty far ahead now because he is the only one I have complete faith in actually wanting M4A. Warren is starting to sound very much like she’s going to cave on everything. I don’t think Yang will cave.
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Count me in as someone who likes most of Yang’s professed policies but completely distrusts him on a personal level and doesn’t think he’s remotely qualified to be president.
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People have different objectives, so what “works” depends on ideology.
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