Thread by @PalmerReport

1) Not sure the nation is aware of how badly Andrew Yang destroyed the race for New York City mayor this year. His bumbling, no-effort vanity campaign got all the media attention, so qualified candidates got no attention, and corrupt candidates got no vetting. Then Yang imploded.

The media deserves blame for sure. But Yang knew what was going on. At some point he pretty clearly decided, consciously or subconsciously, that he didn’t really want to win. But instead of dropping out, he kept hogging the media attention while sabotaging himself.

By the time everyone figured out Yang wasn’t going to win, it was too late for qualified experienced candidates like Garcia, Stringer, and Wiley to get traction. Once Eric Adams pulled into the lead last minute, all kinds of scandals surfaced about him, but didn’t get covered.

And so Eric Adams accidentally won, even though the vast majority of people voted for someone else, and even a lot of Adams voters came to immediately regret. He’ll probably be a lousy mayor, and with his scandals, will he even get to finish his term?

Again, blame the media for having a job to do and not doing it. But the media is always like this. Andrew Yang knew full well he was sabotaging the democratic primary race by hogging all the attention for what turned out to not even be a real campaign on his part.

Right after Yang lost, he came out with a book attacking the Democrats, quitting the party, and starting his own third party. Does this sound like a guy who had any intention of really trying to win a Democratic primary for Mayor? When he start writing this anti-Democrat book?

Being mayor is hard work, a thankless job, and unprofitable. Publishing a controversial high profile book makes you millions of dollars and you never have to work again. Was Yang’s entire NYC Mayor campaign all about setting up his book, or just the latter parts of it?

Other things went wrong. The media negligently chased ratings with Yang as usual. And ranked choice, a good system in theory, only ended up taking away the one fail safe – a democratic primary runoff between the top two candidates – that in any previous year would have fixed this

But it was Andrew Yang who took advantage of the media’s inherent desire to give all the coverage to the most idiotic candidate. It was Yang who stayed in the race long after it was clear he didn’t want to win. It was Yang who turned the democratic primary race into a book tour.

And now that Andrew Yang has negligently and selfishly destroyed a democratic primary race in America’s biggest city, he’s chasing in with a book that lays the blame for his own failures at the feet of the Democratic Party. You can’t get much more blatantly awful than that.

Yet the media, with very few exceptions, is doing nothing to hold Andrew Yang accountable for his mess. Instead they’ve rolled out the red carpet for his book tour. They’re helping make him rich. Why? Because he’s good for ratings. Just bad for America.

Was Andrew Yang always a con artist who was only ever looking to use politics to boost his ego and fortunes?

Did Yang start off meaning well, until he realized he was bad at politics but good for TV ratings, and the media corrupted him at that point?

You’ll have to decide.

Either way, the Andrew Yang NYC Mayor debacle stands as Exhibit A of why it’s so dangerous for outsiders who are clueless about politics to just wander in and shit all over the election process, and for the media to see them as an opportunity to boost ratings.

Trump, Yang, Ben Carson, Marianne Williamson, JD Vance. We’re in a crisis where outsiders run stunt political campaigns to boost their wallets while willfully destroying the electoral process. But the media won’t expose this crisis, because the media benefits from this crisis.

What can be done? Stop letting the media feed you fake stunt candidates on a silver platter; change the channel so they’ll have to find some more legitimate way to get ratings. And stop supporting worthless outsider candidates just because you want to stick it to the system.

Also, stop pretending these outsider candidates have good ideas. They don’t. They have theoretical ideas that sound good in a debate soundbite but would never work in practice. Politics and governing are hard, even for qualified people. It’s impossible for unqualified amateurs.

“But Palmer, why don’t you just try to work with people like Andrew Yang?”

Yang followed me on Twitter for all of 2021. He never once reached out to me about his mayor campaign. But he did reach out to ask where he could send me a copy of his book.

How do I even work with that?

(and after I criticized his book, he unfollowed me)

But this isn’t about Andrew Yang. He cashed out with a divisive book because he’s washed up in politics anyway. We won’t hear from him again.

This is about the media continuing to give all its coverage to absurd stunt candidates. It won’t stop until we stop tuning in for it.