Andrew Yang calls US a ‘faux democracy’

Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential candidate and now the co-chair of the Forward Party, said in a new interview that the United States is in a “faux democracy.”

“Our lives can just sink in the mud, it doesn’t matter in this political system, and so you have this essentially faux democracy at this point,” Yang told The Hill’s Jessica Burbank and Robby Soave on “The Rising.”

“And that’s what we have to shake up and change,” he added. “The only way we’re going to see a human centered economy or any of our problems get solved is if we recreate a genuine democracy in this country.”

Yang called for a competitive 2024 primary season for Democrats, even as President Biden has emerged as the presumed candidate for the party.

When Soave pointed out that Biden has not given an indication of whether he will debate other Democratic candidates — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson —Yang blasted the Democratic Party, saying that its members are only “for democracy when it’s convenient.”

Yang also pushed for reforms to the primary system, including ranked choice voting and nonpartisan primaries. He pointed to states, including Nevada and Maine, that have recently approved changes to the election system, such as using nonpartisan primaries for some elections.

He added that the current primary system only allows for a small percentage of Americans to choose the candidates for president. He noted that if the general public truly voted on who should be the nominees for president, neither Biden nor former President Trump would make the cut in 2024.

“You have a sliver of the population controlling who the nominees are. And they’re not ideologically in tune with the average American,” he said. “It’s distorting everything. It’s one reason why Trump is trampling the field over there.”

“If you submitted it to the general American public and said, ‘Who should be the nominees,’ you wouldn’t get Biden versus Trump.”