NYC Mayor: Yang Falls Apart

An Update On New York

So it seems like Andrew Yang, everyone's favourite meme factory and the former frontrunner for the Democratic Nomination for the Mayoralty of New York, is no longer the juggernaut that he once was, and now everyone is trying to make sense of a race that is finally moving, with just over a month before polling day. And yet, I'm not really surprised by this, because it never made sense why Yang was running so far ahead of the field, given he is a fundamentally unserious fool who should have no chance to become Mayor.

Yang is now locked into a coin flip race with Eric Adams, the current Brooklyn Borough President and a former State Senator, both in terms of who will get the plurality of first preferences and who will manage to get over the line after the Ranked Choice Voting. That that will be the final two is not at all a guarantee - Maya Wiley and the embattled Scott Stringer have both had single polls where they manage to come a competitive third place, and where they could in theory make the final two, but it seems rather likely that Adams and Yang - the only two candidates with consistent, across the board good polling - will make the final two. And if that's the case … fuck, I think Yang loses.

I know it's stupid to frame it around Yang losing, as opposed to Adams winning, but this race, in terms of people caring about it, has been entirely framed by Yang or Not Yang, so let's talk about it in those terms. Yang's coalition never really made a lot of sense - he's not a progressive, he's not a moderate, his statement that UBI should be in lieu of a minimum wage increase was idiotic, and his handling of the domestic politics around events in the Middle East this week has been out of step with the growing middle of Democratic politics. Where in the past, a statement that prioritizes solidarity with Israel for what Hamas is doing to them, while ignoring what Israel is also guilty of, would be so mundane as to not be worth noting, Yang's rote response to the conflict did not sit well with many, including AOC. Even more than costing him many votes - which it may, on the margins - it shows that Yang's path to 50%+1 of the vote makes little sense.

Adams, on the hand? That coalition makes a lot of sense, actually. Black voters, enough Hispanics and Asians, and wealthy whites. Adams is running on a platform that could be described as Bloomberg-esque, positioning himself as a check against the worst excesses of a Democratic-controlled City Council. His platform talks about finding efficiencies in government, tinkering on the edges of the NYPD (as opposed to engaging in any meaningful way with Defund or abolition), and tax relief for small businesses. This isn't a bad platform by any means, but it isn't a platform of a radical. It is a platform that could very easily find favour with enough well to do white professionals, for lack of a better term - the class of lawyers, doctors, bankers, accountants, and journalists who descend on New York City. Throw in overwhelming Black support against Yang, whose Presidential bid never found any support from the Black community, and enough support amongst less left-wing Hispanics, and you can see how the path exists.

Adams also has the advantage that Yang has not run a good campaign - he was winning because he was the person everyone had heard of, as opposed to running a good campaign. He doesn't have any history of knowing how to respond in a moment of difficulty, and while Lis Smith working for him means he might manage his way back, he is still in trouble, without a history of knowing how to get his mojo back, given he has quite literally never had any of it to lose. Yes, many have equated Yang to Biden in the sense that they were the overwhelming front runner who the media class didn't understand the support for, but the problem with that comparison is that Joe Biden was a serious politician who had run campaigns before, had taken a punch before, and managed to survive. Yang has no such experience, and his campaign - which seems chaotic and disorganized at the best of times - does not have the benefit of a disciplined candidate needed to pull off the sort of comeback. Even comparing Yang to Lis Smith's most recent candidate - the current Secretary of Transport, Pete Buttigieg - is night and day. Like or loathe Pete, he could execute a very specific strategy flawlessly, to the extent where a former small town Mayor forced his way into the Cabinet. Yang has no such discipline or ability, as much as many would like to pretend he does.

Yang has always been an unserious joke of a candidate, and that has always been the thing that the media class have believed, but never said outright, because people didn't want to be seen as out of touch with ordinary voters, after having been caught out a few times in recent years. Adams would not be a perfect Mayor, but when the options are his imperfect plan for the city and Yang's idiotic, incoherent vision for a city he doesn't understand, the choice is clear. Fortunately, it looks like Democrats have figured out Yang's fundamental uselessness, and he is now an underdog to be the next Mayor.