Brief description
I’m from Europe, but I’m somewhat interested in US politics. I would like to know what people think / expect from the Forward Party.
Long description
I stumbled upon Andrew Yang’s twitter account some time ago and I’ve been low-key reading about the Forward Party since then. I’ve also started to follow Jules Terpak who, afaik, is very popular —especially among young people— and is a public supporter of the party.
Being from Europe, “diverse” parliaments —those with three, five or a dozen of parties— and coalition governments feel pretty natural, but the US is, in that sense, a completely different world. Additionally, the only input I receive about the party is from a limited amount of supporters —one being the leader—, what makes my intuition essentially useless.
I am aware that the Forward Party is not running any candidate for the next presidential election, but I don’t expect any Forward candidate to become president any time soon. What I’d like to know is if you expect the party to achieve meaningful representation in Congress. By meaningful I mean that the major parties will be forced to negotiate with them in order to pass legislation.
Note
I don’t necessarily want to define a time limit for this question, but am open to do it if you give me a good reason. I will obviously do it if the Forwards become meaningful but, unless the party disappears, I don’t see a reason to close it with a NO.
I will set the end date to the 2028 election day by now and, if the market becomes popular, we can discuss a better ending date in the future.
Related questions
The U.S. first-past-the-post system means that third parties have an extremely difficult time winning elections, especially at the statewide and federal level. The Forward Party also doesn't really have much appeal to the electorate - it's very much a Silicon Valley Techie party, so its ability to win elections in rural areas or areas that aren't home to huge tech companies is probably very limited. Any party that runs as "centrist" in the U.S. is doomed to fail because the Democrats are already a centrist party.
@evergreenemily as mentioned in the description, I'm not thinking about them winning anything, but achieving enough representation to become meaningful. If you check this article about Spanish elections, their role would be that of Junts -leaving ideology aside.
@evergreenemily I personally understand that a centrist party is the one that would gather votes from people who agree with some of the views of each major party. Democrats and Republicans are perceived as Center-Right and Right from the outside.
@alfonsoSR I'd argue that center-right and far-right are probably more accurate if we're comparing them to European parties. The Democrats represent the status quo and the Republicans represent nationalism, populism, and borderline fascism at this point.
The thing is, there's not a lot of centrists of that kind in American politics. There aren't many people who agree with some Democratic positions and some Republican positions; the country is heavily polarized along ideological and demographic lines.
The FPTP system might also lock Forward out of Congress entirely - Forward could win 25% of the vote nationally and win zero seats if that support was spread evenly across the country. Most supporters of Forward would otherwise be Democrats, so there would probably be a lot of elections that looked like 35% Democrat, 25% Forward, and 45% Republican. Forward is more likely to play the role of a spoiler than a major influence in Congress.
@evergreenemily yeah, I agree, that's what I meant by right. No one likes to be called "far-anything" though, and I'd like to listen to what people thinks, not to convince anyone of anything. That's why I said "right".
Politics are also pretty polarized here, but a party called Ciudadanos, which basically feels like Forward there, suddenly became the first political force in many regions -equivalent to states there. That said, FPTP does not exist here and, as I said, if I trusted my intuition I would not have created this market!
At any rate, thanks for the comments! I'm learning some new things today :)