Sorry, Andrew Yang – a new third party won’t fix America’s political problems | Andrew Gawthorpe

Those who care about democracy should advance the Democratic party. Anything else is a vanity project

Does the US need a third party, and can one succeed? According to the founders of the new Forward party, the answer to both questions is yes. By targeting disaffected Americans on all parts of the political spectrum, the founders - who include the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the former Republican governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman - hope to create a new force that will lead Americans into a future in which they can cut out the extreme partisanship, reintroduce a competition of ideas, and work together in good faith".

Sounds great. But unfortunately, the Forward party is ill conceived, based on a faulty idea of how to fix America's descent into political madness, and likely to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and host of the podcast America Explained