Andrew Yang is reportedly “in touch” with Elon Musk over the latter’s recently announced bid to start a new political party, dubbed the America Party. In an interview with POLITICO, Yang said he was “excited for anyone who wants to move on from the duopoly,” and that he was “happy to help give someone a sense of what that path looks like,” having started his own Forward Party in 2022. POLITICO reports that Yang did not give any further details on what they discussed when asked. Both the Forward and America parties have a glaring weakness in common: they don’t seem to stand for much.
Yang, a tech entrepreneur like Musk, began his political career in earnest when he ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in the 2020 presidential election. At the time, the Tesla CEO came out as a supporter of Yang’s candidacy, particularly his signature policy of universal basic income (UBI). In the race for the White House, Yang failed to capture much of a following, polling at around 2 percent at the end of 2019 and never reaching 5 percent before suspending his campaign in February 2020.
On the other hand, his mayoral bid in New York City the following year held some initial promise, as he led the field by nearly ten points in April 2021, and attracted far more individual contributions than any other candidate. That impressive metric of support was not reflected in the results on primary day, however, as Yang gradually fell behind and finished in fourth place on New York Democrats’ ranked choice ballots in June, behind Kathryn Garcia, Maya Wiley, and Eric Adams, who would go on to become mayor in the fall.
Yang announced the creation of the Forward Party in the summer of 2022. H was playing up its appeal as an alternative to Ds and Rs with the slogan: “Not Left. Not Right. FORWARD.” To date, Forward has been recognized as a party in Utah, Florida, South Carolina, and Colorado. Dozens of other states have “organizing teams” on the ground, according to the party’s website, building out networks and endorsing candidates. Nonetheless, the Forward Party remains well behind its own stated goals. Christine Todd Whitman – founding co-chair of the party and former Republican governor of New Jersey – told City & State in 2023 that Forward was seeking to be “recognized as a party in every state by 2024/2025.”
Despite the Forward Party billing itself as an alternative to the two major parties, concrete policy commitments are hard to come by. This is spun as a positive on Forward’s website, which states that the party “won’t dictate a rigid, top-down policy platform and expect it to work for every community across the country.” While that may give those local communities the freedom to organize around goals specific to them, it does not resolve the question of what the party stands for or seeks to achieve.
A post on X from July 6th provides an example typical of this ideological gap, as the Forward Party official account reposted an Andrew Yang post linking to a CBS article about the rising cost of living, with an accompanying message: “There are a ton of good reasons to move on from the two party system – most prominently that it hasn’t been working for millions of Americans for quite a while.” Left unsaid by both Yang and Forward is what either would recommend to address the issue detailed in the article.
Elon Musk’s venture appears to cover the same ground as Yang’s. Like Forward, the America Party also employs language that speaks to people’s political frustrations while remaining vague on any policies. Unlike Forward, Musk’s America Party announcement over the weekend comes on the heels of a falling out with President Trump. “The America Party is here because 80% of Americans are politically homeless,” the America Party website declares. “They’re tired of the noise, the division, and the feeling of being ignored. A new political party, built to represent the vast majority in the middle.” As of this writing, the website details no policy goals or strategy.
Whether Yang and Musk join forces or not, the brand they share, built around tough talk and calls for an alternative, can’t help but attract some attention given the broad dissatisfaction with established political vehicles. Republicans are 10 points underwater in an average of favorability polls from RealClearPolitics, and Democrats fare even worse, viewed unfavorably by a margin of 21 points.
But the rubber never meets the road, and looking past their boilerplate critique of the status quo, it becomes apparent that Musk and Yang’s political projects are just pro-business vehicles that would rather not say so plainly. The Forward Party is run by a Republican, and Yang’s UBI idea (one of his only concrete policies) lost support once the Democratic electorate realized the measure was meant to justify deep cuts across social spending. Elon Musk’s supposed bid to speak for the “politically homeless” comes after he spent the last year effectively taking over the Republican Party, and the support he’s attracting from fellow billionaires like Mark Cuban and right-wing political operatives like Anthony Scaramucci for the America Party does not point to a significant shift from the status quo.
The article shared in the Forward Party X post from Yang details how a new analysis shows that “the gap between what Americans earn and how much they need to bring in to achieve a basic standard of living is growing.” Those in such a position who put their faith in either of Musk or Yang are bound to be disappointed.
