Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang criticized the Democratic Party on Thursday, suggesting that Americans think they are focusing more on “monitoring cultural issues” than on improving lives.
During his appearance on CNN, Yang was asked by moderator Don Lemon what he thinks about the arguments that the Democratic Party is not doing a good job of talking to the American working class.
Yang noted that during the presidential campaign he had seen “countless times” members of the working class, such as truck drivers or retail workers, “flinch as if I had said something really negative or as if I had changed color or something” after he told them he was running for Democrat.
“And there is something deeply wrong when working class Americans have this reaction to a big party that should theoretically be fighting for them,” Yang said. “So you have to ask yourself what the Democratic Party stands for in their minds, and in their minds, unfortunately, the Democratic Party has taken over this role from the urban elites on the coast, who are more concerned with monitoring various cultural issues than with improving their way of life, which has been declining for years.
Yang’s comments about the Democratic Party come as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is currently leading President Donald Trump in both the election and the plebiscite in the 2020 election.
Despite Biden’s lead over Trump, the Democratic Party has not been able to win a majority in the Senate, as several incumbent GOP senators have won victories in their respective races.
In addition, the GOP won several new seats in the House of Representatives, with victories over the incumbent Democrats in South Florida, New Mexico, South Carolina, Iowa and Minnesota.
Yang is not the only former Democratic presidential candidate to criticize the party for moving away from the American working class, as independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders similarly stated just last week.
During his appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Sanders was asked what Biden should do to “get the Democratic Party to serve the working people of this country again. If he wins the presidency.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Democratic Party has in many ways become a party of the coastal elites, people who have a lot of money, people from the upper middle class who are good people who believe in social justice in many ways,” Sanders said in response. “But I believe that for many, many years the Democratic Party has not given the needs of the working class the kind of attention it should have had.
Washington Newsday asked Yang for a comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
