done on either side. i think people watching this at home can relate to that. if you are a reasonable person you are scratching your head being like, why is it our leaders seem so unreasonable relative to anyone else? [laughter] the answer is that those are the incentives of our system. right now if you become an elected representative you do not answer to 51% of the population, as much as we would like to pretend otherwise.

who do you answer to? the answer to the 10% to 20% of the most partisan voters who will vote on a democrat or republican in your district. 80% of districts are safe seats. i can sense even from the people calling in, the approval rate for congress nationally is only 28%. people don't love what is going on or not going on. but the reelection rate for individual members is 92%. people are going to win election over and over again, in part because they are catering to the base on either side, and then when they come together they can't get anything done. we are all fed up by it. we are all frustrated, and this is the biggest thing. we have been sold a bill of goods that is intended to work when it is not designed to work. i want to get to the real

problems that i talk about in my book, and that is not just a democratic problem or republican problem. it is a systemwide problem. that is why i had to leave the democratic party to get this work done. host: as far as the real problem that existed elsewhere, how would you identify that and how does the forward party remedy that? guest: in a past life i ran a business, and i also have been an entrepreneur. one of the things you learn that people respond to incentives. [laughter] if you reward them, that is generally where they will go. where are the political incentives right now? it is to get out and make very, very ideological or inflammatory arguments that some people love. the people that love those arguments will send you money, will vote you back in again in very, very partisan primaries. we have to do is change the

intent -- change the incentives. instead of listening over here and getting money from over here, we want you to listen to all of us, and may, you know, if we were to really go far, maybe there is even a way to where your financial incentives are tied to how you are doing relative to the entire population. this sounds very dramatic. but it is entirely achievable. the way we get there is by getting rid of closed-party primaries. everything is determined at at the state level. shift to open primaries and ranked choice voting instead. anyone can vote. i think that is very straightforward. then you need a process so you don't have any spoilers. if there were two democrats and one republican, the republican doesn't automatically win. you implement a process where voters can make their choices so there is no spoiler effect. if you do these two things, all

of a sudden our legislators would become reasonable overnight. we can do this via initiatives around the country. cannot wait for congress to get its act together, because we know that will never work. [laughter] what we do is go to the communities around the country that are fed up, which is all of us, and say, let's change the process. host: you give an example in writing about that process to senator lisa murkowski of alaska. guest: there is a state that has already made this change, and that is alaska, where all alaskans have a say in who their representatives are, and what this means for senator murkowski is that she can exercise her independent judgment and take her decisions to the entire state, instead of having to go through partisan primaries where only 10% to 20% of people will

participate. a lot of people watching this at home no what i'm talking about. if you are in the minority party in 83% of the districts around the country, you know you don't have any say. that is something that we can change, and alaska has already made this change, just because a lot of alaskans got together and said, this is better. host: our guest until 10:00. if you want to ask him questions about the party, his book, and other matters, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 free democrats. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can text us at (202) 748-8003. your decision to leave the democratic party, how much of that was influenced by your run for the presidency and mayor of new york? guest: i met a lot of wonderful people on my campaigns, made some deep friendships and connections.

the thing i believe -- and i think most people watching at home will agree -- there are good people in every political party. there is no party that has a monopoly on goodness. [laughter] i have many tremendous relationships, and was difficult to even change my voter registration given that, again, i had been a democrat for a decade. but it felt like the right thing to do if we are going to pull our country together. people sense that people of different political alignments are not your enemy. we are all americans. we love our fellow americans. friends and family will vote for the other side, and we still have to come together afterwards and have dinner together. host: you write in your book, more than 60% of americans say both political parties are out of touch. the structural forces make it nearly impossible. you can't win races, you don't have financing, the media will

attack you. partisans will say you are empowering their opponents, which they will characterize as a toxic threat. will lose friends. on top of that it is impossible to start a viable third party. that is what you write, and yet you decide to go ahead and start one. take it from there. guest: immediately thereafter -- [laughter] i talk about how at this .57% of americans want a third party, and there is -- 57% of americans want a third party, and there is no time like the present. candidates like myself, i'm happy to say raised tens of millions of dollars for my presidential run, and i believe can speak to people of any party. so that is the catalyst for what i hope is a popular movement, a forward party, that registered democrats, registered republicans, and independents are welcome to join. we can since that our country is

not working right now. if you are watching this at home, or watching because you feel a responsibility to our country, it also most of you are feeling some misgivings and despair. reasonable. like most reasonable americans would look up and be like this is not functioning well. it is not functioning well because it is designed to fail. you know it is a nasty system when everyone acts rationally, we are all going to lose at an epic scale. when you ask, why is now the time for a third party movement to succeed? it is because we have record-high, literally civil war-era levels of polarization, and we need a solution. if millions of us can provide this solution, then we will all feel much much better about the future of our country. host: the forward party, is this a vehicle for a future

presidential run or a vehicle to make these changes you advocate for? guest: the number one change we need to make that would unlock our leaders to actually do the jobs that we hope they will do is open primaries and ranked choice voting around the country. we will support candidates that advocate for those changes, but we need to be focused on the upcoming races in 2022, because there is a lot of good that can be done. host: from alisha in columbia, maryland. you are up first with andrew yang. guest: the independent line! host: alicia, go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro, and mr. young, is it? and good morning, america. listen. if you get some of those folks that have been in there for so

many years, they become very bossy. you know who i mean. what do you think about term limits? would you please comment on that? and i am an independent, so i fully support you. thank you. guest: thank you, alicia. that means the world to me. we need term limits in congress. 75% of americans agree with that. you shouldn't be going to washington to spend the rest of your life. [laughter] it should be a tour of duty. you get things done, and then you come home. if that is common sense and we know it, why can't we have term limits? the forward party is pro term limits on members of congress. they should do our work and then come home and not see d.c. as their ultimate destination. if you agree with that, forwardparty.com. it is common sense. it is a sign of corruption that something so obvious has not been done. host: from hopewell junction,

new york. eric, hello. caller: good morning morning to both of you and props to brian lamb for this amazing form that is in full blossom. and you, you are a numbers guy. i'm not. i am a one-note numbers guy. i called in before about this. i have been taking the personal poll. i do four or five a day. that is a lot of people, thousands. my criteria is, when i find them alone i asked him. my results were, 85% of people were nice. what do you think other people think? that really made it very complex and interesting. nobody was mean to me or nasty to me. they engaged me, check think is

a positive, because it is unusual in this age when everyone has a computer in their pocket. no, for somebody to confront them with these kinds of inane on the surface, you know, sort of provocative question, getting out of their sin. you do it all the time. i'm amazed at your abilities and you saying that the polemics in of sides are out of control. it ties into testimony yesterday about who is playing us and how our amygdalas are excited to the point of no return. host: eric, thank you very much. guest: i want to speak to that. it comes up in my book. we are being manipulated. so, you have these political incentives that are driven to manipulate us through alarmist

fundraising messages and everything. we have all gotten the messages. [laughter] then you have many organizations -- c-span accepted -- that end up heightening their inflammation and polarization. you hit the nail on the head that social media is pouring fuel on the whole thing. social media is terrible for any semblance of rational discourse. negativity and mistruths spread six times more quickly on social media. in that environment how are you going to be able to come together? again, love c-span for this reason. i sense you all are watching because you see it as something of an antidote. it is free of a lot of these market pressures i am describing, and we should be doing much more for local journalism -- which, by the way, tends to be much less political. if you miss your local back.

2000 local papers have gone out of business. it is a crime. how can you have a thriving democracy if there is no one covering news in your town? there are some obvious problems being driven by this hyper capitalism we are in the midst of, and it is shredding any chance of being able to come together and have rational conversations. so, love c-span. keep it up, but i understand what you are saying. we are being manipulated. that is what we have to stop together. host: you mentioned facebook specifically in your book. the more data sets a company has, the more valuable each of them is. facebook's network incorporates other websites. you don't even have to be on facebook to participate in the harvesting of data. instead of having things sold to us, we are being sold to those with the means to buy access to every detail of our behavior and

a financial interest to shape what we do next. what did you think about that testimony on capitol hill from that whistleblower? guest: i was entirely unsurprised by everything. there are people like me who know this stuff is going on. you know the only people who don't know this stuff is going on? washington, d.c., truly. you could line up most adults, certainly anyone related to the tech industry and they would say, oh yeah. they are not just the facts of this facebook for sure. facebook is dissembling about those effects. why? because they are a trillion dollar franchise and they are not going to shoot themselves in the foot. this is a product of the fact that our leaders are decades behind the curve. decades. no one reason why they are decades behind the curve? because they have been in d.c. for too long. we need people rotating in and

out, then you have people who might have used facebook natively themselves were like, yeah, this is a problem. host: is there a forward party approach when it comes to social media? not only how you use it, but changes that should be made? guest: we have a platform around data rights, which is our data is getting sold and resold for hundreds of billions of dollars. are you seeing any of that money? you know who is seeing it? mark zuckerberg and facebook. it is a human rights issue. if our data is getting sold and resold, don't you want to stop that? we should be passing laws around our own data rights, and if we decide to share it with a tech opening for our own convenience, then we need to know what is going on, there needs to be an independent guardian for us that is not the tech company itself, and if there is money to be made, should be getting some of that money. i think those are straightforward rules. host: donnie, independent line.

caller: i see the big problem in elections as the money. there is no way a lower-class person can compete. you have to be a millionaire, practically, or have access to millions of dollars to even run. we need to do away with that. having the states have a election website where all of the information the candidates have, required to be on the ballots they would have to fill in the forms, like saying what their positions are. right now the people all they can rely on is 32nd tv commercial, and that is why we are getting such bad candidates.

i don't think third parties would be an answer, and i don't like the ranked choice voting. that just adds confusion to the long, drawnout process, but we should just have, like, a conservative party, and then a liberal party, and all of the groups and parties would have to go into one of those and be on the ballot. host: thank you. guest: i want to speak to the point about money in politics. he is correct. the average congressional campaign now costs over $1.5 million. senate campaign, $10 million. who can get that money? people who are plugged into high-level networks. how do you change that? public financing of elections would be the ideal solution, and what i propose is that every american gets $100 you can give

to anyone you want. if you have 10,000 people together, that is one million dollars, and all of a sudden you are competitive. right now it is difficult to get any person to donate, because who has that kind of money? if you gave people democracy dollars it would be a huge step up. but you do have leaders who all look and sound the same because they all come from the same financial background. host: eastpoint, kentucky, republican line. robert, hello. caller: i just got a comment with mr. yang there. well, a couple of comments. the first one is, there is too much corruption in politics. there is no investigations into corruptions that they be into, but the other comment i got is his idea on primaries.

in the situation like he talks about their in an area where a democrat gets arrived -- get selected year after year, when somebody on republican or independent party has a better idea of what to do, run the government more honestly, and might be able to get elected, if they run on their party, the opposite party can cross lines in the primary and get him completely out of the situation. and that is changing our election process for the bad, in my opinion. thank you. guest: thank you, and you are right. right now the party designation is distorting everything because people are making strategic decisions based upon how they are getting elected. you have a lot of people choosing which party to run under based on which party is going to help them win.

which is why i think open primaries would help, because then you could say what you think and people who want to support you -- and you don't have to put a d or r next to your name to have a chance to win. to the question about corruption, of course corruption is rampant in politics. we are spending billions of dollars influencing these people. they all go to washington and come back somehow really wealthy. [laughter] you are like, wait a minute, your salary is not that high. how is it you have somehow made millions of dollars? that is one reason why you need term limits, so that people cannot go and hover there and enrich themselves in various ways. it is all a club at this point. if you are in this club and someone screws up, do you drum them out or cover it up? it is unfortunate it is happening, but we all know it is. host: in washington, d.c. there

are debates over the debt level. there are current debates over passing the president's agenda. what is the forward party way of dealing with these and coming up with a solution to go forward that makes the best of both ideas? guest: the forward party principles in many ways are on full display in washington, where you have these polarized sides and you have two senators who are essentially controlling the entire agenda. that is a function of how broken up the system is. the goal with the forward party is to make both sides more prone to compromising by making it that you are responsible to voters of every political party when you go for reelection. then maybe we even get a few people elected through the forward party that represent this reasonable middle that end up being a bridge. what is funny is people talk to

me about the ford party -- the forward party. we are going to be supporting open primaries, but if you win even a few races you can actually do a lot of good bringing sides together. you don't need to win in this senate example you don't need to win 50 races. if you were to win one or two then that could be a game changer for the entire country. host: would you go as far as changing rules and other ticket agendas done, such as the filibuster? guest: i looked in the constitution and there is nothing about the filibuster. there is nothing about political parties. we are not big fans of political parties. they thought they would lead to factionalism and polarization -- which, by the way, they were right. if they were to have political parties, they would have wanted many, many more than two. the current situation is something of a nightmare for our founding fathers.

when they wrote up the senate they did not include a filibuster, and you have to ask why. host: from new jersey, lynette, democrats line. hello. caller: good morning, c-span. i would like to know what mr. yang thanks about the job senator sanders is doing? i personally think he is the up enemy of a true public servant, and i am curious as to what mr. yang thinks. thank you. guest: well, first time caller, you called on behalf of that question, which i love, by the way. i supported bernie sanders in the 2016 primary. meeting him on the trail when i ran for president was a privilege. when he said something nice about me and to me, i felt extraordinarily proud, like i had been blessed by my uncle or something along those lines. i am a huge believer in bernie, because he is not corrupt in the

least. he is a pure messenger, a pure public servant. he has a vision for the country. i agree with much of his vision, and he is fighting like mad until the day he dies. have to love and appreciate that. host: a viewer off of twitter asks you a question, saying, reasonable people understand your position on becoming an independent. however pulling voters away to a new party opens the door to a cult of personality in the republican party and the wealthy. how can your decision help? guest: this is a reaction you get a lot from a particular side , let's call it democrat. cheers, if you do anything independent it is going to hurt democrats. but if you look at the numbers, there is a higher desire for a third-party or independent party among republicans and there is among democrats.

if you were to actually draw it out, you are more likely to have voters from every alignment or even from the republican party then you are democrats. when i ran for president as a democratic candidate, 42% of my supporters then, in a democratic primary, were not sure they were going to support the democratic nominee if it were not me. i have a record of appealing to people of every alignment, and structurally you are more likely to draw in independent republicans than democrats. host: as far as your run for the presidency, he wrote an op-ed about what that did to you internally. could you talk a little bit about that, that impact on you? guest: i called a reality tv show on the debate stage, and i wanted to say in my book -- which, if you ever wonder what it is like to run for president, dubai this book, because i talk about it at length.

you have makeup on your face and you are shooting tv ads, and you are surrounded by staff all the time who are ferrying you from event to event, and everywhere you go you are giving a speech or talk. it messes with your brain. it makes you into less of a normal person, that's for sure. over time it makes you less empathetic. [laughter] i guess that is one reason why we need term limits. if you are in this for text of attention and money it arranges -- deranges you. i did not have "power" for very long. [laughter] i was the center of attention for a particular period of time, and even that was enough to influence the way you interact with the world. i talk about the reality of running for president as, like, it is not an active leadership like it should be.

we talk about leaders -- i don't see getting in front of a tv camera and opining as an act of leadership. the ship is something you do quietly and interpersonally, and you care about the folks working on your behalf. that is not what politics looks like today, really. then you wonder why people seem so broken and corrupt. our process actually will make even reasonable people less reasonable over time. host: from the book, you write in part, spend times with people who schedule -- who schedule revolve around you. you function on appearance. empathy becomes optional or unhelpful. leadership becomes the appearance of leadership. guest: yeah, we have a bunch of people who are literally just trying to stimulate leadership. [laughter] because that is the way our

process is. it is not great, you know? think about all of the phenomenal people -- and you watching this are probably qualified. i'm going to say something dramatic. if he were to line up a bunch of americans of any background they were come to the decision that would probably do better than our elected representatives right now, you know? it is in part because in order to become an elected representative now need to have a certain kind of personality. would be much more likely to have a certain kind of natural background. [laughter] and i am natively an introverted guy. i was a nerdy asian kid growing up. all i wanted to do was read books. so, for office was a very unusual thing, but in a way i want to speak for the introverts among us who suspect there might be something wrong with the folks who do this for a living

and say, there might be ways we can treat the process so you get a different kind of people in the door, and also you do not have people's worst tendencies elevated over time. host: let's hear from john. caller: good morning, c-span. good morning morning, pedro, mr. yang. i wanted to hear your thoughts on, instead of creating a new party -- because you start a new party and some of the same issues -- you know, everyone is with a party until their party is against something they personally are not in grants with, and then they are stuck with party. instead of starting a new party, what are your thoughts on an alliance of congressmen that will agree to disband the party

system altogether? so, you know, you ban allegiance between incumbent congressman that, you know, once they are elected in office they will agree to disband the party system and just have no parties? because the system we are in now, people just vote up and down party lines. there is no reason in even campaigning on policies, because people are going to vote on party lines. host: ok, john. guest: this is a fun and fascinating argument. i like it. first, the ford party's intervals are very broad. one of them is grace and tolerance, itches, again, we love our fellow americans. what we are upset about is a system that is manipulating us

and turning us against each other. we are not taking stances on, like, you know, dozens of issues. we are trying to focus on the main problem, which is the structure itself. if a bunch of members of congress were to come together and say, let's get rid of parties, i would love that, but one of the realities see in governance is that you probably need at least some kind of team, because if you have a body of 435 people and there are no or -- are no organized groups, it is difficult to operate. if you look around the world, they have systems where they often have more than two parties. i'm going to suggest two as a sub optimal number of parties. think about it. two you are like, what is going on? if you look at the u.k., it has five parties. if you look at a place like sweden, it has eight.

and i'm going to suggest that that would be superior to our current system, because instead of the two sides ringing against each other all the time, he would have a set of coalitions where, i agree with you on this, let's work together, i don't agree with you on this, i'm going to work with these other people. we need parties to organize activities. i think you need more than two. what is the ideal number? i don't know. i think it should be an odd number. [laughter] you know, helped make tiebreakers more feasible. i love what you are arguing. if members of congress were to say, let's have term limits, if they were to stand up and say, look, this duopoly is not the way to go, that would be phenomenal. host: our guest, and drew -- andrew yang, with us until 10:00. mr. yang, what is venture for america? guest: venture for america is a

nonprofit that helps train young entrepreneurs that create jobs in cities around the country, any of them in the midwest and south. i started venture for america in 2011, after i had some success in -- success and i thought about how hard it is to become an entrepreneur. it is too hard. i thought, we need more entrepreneurs, and we need more of them in places like troyes and birmingham and baltimore, and so i spent a number of years running that organization. i'm proud to say it has now created thousands of jobs around the country. i was honored by the obama men -- obama administration. it was during that time i traveled that i grew to realize our economy was being transformed by automation and we eliminated billions of manufacturing jobs through a combination of globalization and automation. that is when many of you probably met me, when i decided

to run for president on universal basic income in response to the technological decimation of american jobs. but i learned that through my activities at venture for america over six and a half years running a nonprofit organization that helps train young entrepreneurs. host: this is daniel, democrats line. caller: hello, can you hear me? host: yes, you are on. guest: america can. you are on c-span. caller: yes, i believe you have a platform, and i was wondering if your platform includes the elimination of education by zip code? if i could just say that my son -- i live in a rural community. i son had his history education with five years on the civil war.

one other thing, i live in a rural community and i see a lot of things here. if there is such a thing as affirmative action for the so-called deplorable? thank you. guest: there are massive inequities in our education system because of the way it is built around property taxes and zip codes, as you are describing. i think one of the great and balances is that we are overlooking rural communities and operating as if, really, the only people of certain backgrounds are overcoming various struggles. the fact is poverty is rampant in rural communities around the country, and if someone is seeking an education and other latter -- ladder, we should be

considering them in the same light. host: tony, independent line. tony in new mexico, good morning. caller: good morning. i don't really believe term limits is really the solution. solution, for me, is the nullification of citizens united, or corporations united, where because i am a giant adams independent. two parties acting in opposition to each other, in other words, they have been playing us all. guest: agreed. caller: isn't it true that independents outnumber both the democratic and republican parties? guest: true. that is true. caller: we really need to get rid of citizens united, or the

supreme court justices, for me, that committed treason and usurped our constitution and placing profit over humanity. host: thanks, tony. guest: i 100% agree that we should overturn citizens united, and i say that in my book, but i also think the problems predate citizens united, and if you were to overturn citizens united -- which, by the way it would be very difficult in our current structure -- that the money would find other ways in, even if they could not do it directly as citizens united enable. money has been dominating politics for decades. citizens united is not that old a decision, so we should be thinking about overturning citizens united, but we should not think that our problems will be solved by it. you are completely correct that independents outnumber democrats and republicans. i think independents should get together.

i think reform-minded democrats and republicans should get together. that is why i started the forward party. i hope you will all check it out at forwardparty.com and consider moving the country forward, literally. we are being played. we are being manipulated, to tony's point. host: you mentioned your idea of universal basic income. as a concept is it playing out and reality, particularly in cities and states? especially stimulus payments being delivered to americans? is it a concept that could work now? guest: one of the very best things going on right now in our country is the child tax credit. if you are watching this and you got a $300 check for your child or grandchild, you know parents got it -- i guess that would be your kids. [laughter] if you got the $300 check you

are like, wow, this is great. we should keep that forever. 448 economists just signed a letter saying we should keep it forever. it has made people less hungry, it has got school supplies, it has got people in her position to actually learn and spend time with their families in the way they want. so the positive effects are very, very clear, and everyone know who has looked at the data says we should have a child tax credit go on indefinitely. i am thrilled that my campaign might have played a role in augmenting the thought that if we send people some money they will do something positive with it, particularly with their families are concerned. host: here is mary. mary is in kentucky, republican line. caller: good morning. i would like to know what mr. yang thinks about the current

path that joe biden is taking us down of socialism and marxism, in lieu of capitalism. thank you. guest: well, thank you for the question. my outlook on this is that this is a little bit like the polarization question, where you have two sides and they clash, and then when we come to these economic conversations it is socialism, capitalism, clash, clash, clash. in america we have a system that is in some ways way too generous to corporations. we have corporate socialism, in many respects. if a company gets into trouble, the government is there to bail them out. we saw that certainly with wall street not that long ago. right now we have in my mind the worst of all worlds, where we have socialism for powerful companies -- and, by the way, very low taxes, where you have companies like amazon paying

next to nothing in taxes. so, socialism for mega corpse, and if you are down, it must be something you did. the conversation, to me, has to be tweaked to figure out who we are talking about and what the goals are, but i am going to suggest that this conversation is part of the manipulation. the way i can make you upset is by saying look, the other people are pushing for, you know, for socialism or whatnot. then you have to unpack, we really talking about? i give you an example. most people watching this would agree drug prices are too high, and we should get them lower. is that socialism? like, is it socialism to have the government negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of millions of americans? most all of us think having the government negotiate on our behalf would be sensible during would you spend extra money on drugs for people?

you have to distinguish between the goals, the specific goals you have, and then these big labels, which, in my mind, sometimes will end up leading us in the wrong direction. host: when it comes to presidential politics, if you are in arizona says, the first step should be to change the presidential debate commission. any candidate on enough state pallets to mathematically win the electoral college should be automatically included. guest: this is one sign of the duopoly, really. the duopoly has made it nearly impossible for anyone else to run for lots of offices around our country, and certainly you can throw president into the mix. right now the threshold to make a presidential debate is 15% polling, which is extraordinarily high, to this person's point. we should make the criteria more realistic and achievable, to have different points of view.

if your goal is to have different points of view meant, open primaries would be helpful. we need to open it up, and this locking out of smaller points of view is, you could say it is the most egregious at the presidential level, but in my view it is equally egregious at every other level. [laughter] we are doing it everywhere. host: another follow-up from a viewer who asks if you plan to run for president? guest: i am focused on trying to make our system work there for us. and that action starts in 2022. we don't have any time to waste. host: democrats line. caller: yes, my question is, why do the democrats continue to try to work with joe manchin and kyrsten sinema, when it is obvious they stand in the way of progress? doesn't the 14th amendment give

them the opportunity to expel them, or ask them to resign, to replace them with someone who can get progress done? because, you know, seeing as they are working for lobbyists, working for someone else and they are not working for democracy or the democratic party? guest: i'm not aware of an ability for them to somehow have them expelled. the only accountability i know of is that the voters in west virginia and arizona would decide that they are not fans of their leadership. i think that is going to take a little while. do your bigger point, it is a sign of the difficulty, in my view, of having two labels, or somebody spoke to me the other day and said, it seems like kyrsten sinema and these other people are not in the same party. [laughter]

so i will speak for myself on this. i would like to see things get done in washington. i hope that senator kyrsten sinema and joe manchin are able to outline what it would take for them to come to the table. host: from florida, independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. left-right, wrong-right, i mean, i watch the republicans say their side, i watch the democrats say their side, i watch cnn, i watch fox -- i don't know how anybody knows what to choose anymore. we are all raised with certain values. i'm 58 years old. my father worked three jobs to put food on the table. if we are going to be handing money to people and not getting them to get work, to provide for

their families, that doesn't seem in my point as a valuable thing to do. but my mind is different than your mind, just like my neighbor's mind is different, my husband's is different than mine. everybody thinks differently. everybody values differently. who is right? who is wrong? i don't even know who to believe when i watch this stuff on the news, because one says one thing, the next group says something different my completely opposite. the debt limit, we are going to have to do it, but who is going to do it? they fight like children. it is ridiculous, but we need to work. we need old-fashioned values. need to be responsible for our own actions. host: that is beth in tampa, florida. thank you. guest: beth, you are 100% correct that no one knows what to believe or think anymore, because we are in these strange information bubbles. i think c-span is a counterweight to that it is one

reason why i talk about it so favorably. i love work. i love jobs. i love people having a place to go where they're going to interact with other people and do something that contributes and makes them proud and they can go home and feel like they did something for themselves and their family that is going to help move everyone in a better direction. to me the biggest phenomenon we should be focused on is, why are so few americans working? the labor force participation rate is at multi-decade lows. i think you know that. we all know that. he looked around and say, ok, how do we get more people working? how do we create more jobs? there are different ways we could go about it, but i'm going to suggest that if people have more money in their pocket, they are going to go to the local restaurant or hardware store, then that store is going to hire an extra person or two. that is something the government can deliver on, whereas if i

said the government was going to create jobs in another way, maybe, maybe not? [laughter] i am 100% with you, though. i want my kids to work hard. i'd like to believe i work hard. we are on the same page. host: a viewer wants to know your thoughts on abolishing the electoral college going to a popular vote for president. guest: thank you. i think this conversation is something that you can only field in the abstract. what do i mean by that? if you were to go into montana and wyoming and say, hey, would you like to decrease your influence? of course they would say no. in order to eliminate the electoral college you would need a super majority, essentially, of states and representatives, and no one is going to do it. so, talking about it actually ends up leading you in a direction where, in my mind, it ends up furthering the divine.

that is why it should only be talked about in the abstract. let's bring senators from wyoming and montana to the table and there like yes, don't like having less influence. they did not want certain, more populated areas to dominate. if you were to have a presidential election where it was popular vote, someone like me would never set foot in any rural area. we would go to major population markets and try to get on tv in new york, l.a. is that desirable? the entire thing to me is not something we should be using our head-on on, unless, again, you expect all of the people and representatives of less populated states to shoot themselves in the foot, which they are not going to do. that is where i am. you could talk about it, if you could would you do it? that's never going to happen, so we should focus on the system in ways that we can fix. with the forward party, one of

the things that a state level where enough of us get together we can make it happen. it has already happened in at least one state. it is in our interest too. that is where ironman. that's focus on real solutions that will help our country right now. host: becky is bama -- becky is in massachusetts. caller: i know you are getting to the end of the show, so i'm going to try to be quick. i am a trump supporter, and if he went to the independent party i would follow him. what i wanted to say is i appreciate the fact that mr. yang is an outsider of washington. i think that is wonderful. that is what we need. there is too many people that are too inside washington. but my question is -- and i will take it off-line -- is, when he ran for president did you expect

joe biden to be the winner and kamala harris to be the vice president? or did you not think that? was it already predetermined? thank you. guest: thank you, and thank you for the kind words. they mean a lot to me. we are all americans, we are all parents who want the best for our families, and i think there was real resonance to trump's message, because people are sensing that it is not working right. it's not working. i have a very different recipe, a very different prescription. [laughter] i think we should try and fix the guts of the system that is breaking, but thank you. we are all americans, we should be able to see the commonality. did i think that joe and kamala were going to win? you know, when i was running as

a nominee against them, if you remember that time they were actually tough times for joe and kamala. [laughter] i'm not sure i would've called at a certain point in the race. after they became the nominees that i think they were going to defeat trump? i thought that they would get more votes, i did. i thought that would happen in part because, you know, i thought that the country, you know when it was struggling at the time i thought people would be looking for a different approach. host: from california, in south san francisco, independent line. caller: good morning, andrew. i'm so excited you are doing this. i am an independent because i am so tired of all of the lies. i'm so excited to be doing this. guest: forward. caller: yay.

host: go ahead, caller. caller: i have no question, i'm just happy that andrew is running, and i am on team. guest: i will take it. i will take that as a question or comment. forward. we are going to move the country forward. if you are an independent who is sick and tired of the nonsense, join me, and we will clean it up. the founding fathers would be horrified at what has happened to us. it is going to get worse, not better, so let's be positive and fix this, and do it and a way that unifies the country. we are beautiful people. if you get someone individually to talk to you, lovely. [laughter] you know what i mean? what the heck is happening to us? i have talked to thousands and thousands of americans of every background and environment -- rural, suburban, city -- and we can get along together beautifully if we actually see

ourselves as human beings. but we are being set up. we are in set up to be at each other's throats. we have to turn it around. host: mr. yang, what is a measurable amount of success as the forward party? guest: we are going to measure success by how many states we can unlock from these partisan primary system. you can have ballot initiatives in up to 24 states. we are not going to run that many, but hopefully in 2022 you are going to see the process change. if you would like to make that happen, join me at forwardparty.com. host: andrew yang is the head of the forward party, the author of "forward go thanks -- forward."