5-6 minute documentary that answers the question how does the federal government impact your life? you need to use c-span video clips that are easy to access and find on c-span.org. the studentcam competition awards $100,000 in total cash prizes and you have a shot at winning the grand prize of $500,000. entries must be received before january 20, 2022. to see how to get started, visit our websites at studentcam.org. >> andrew yang is joining us, he is the author of this book, he ran for the presidency in 2020 and was part of the -- made the decision to leave the democratic party. thank you for being here this morning.

the decision to leave the party itself, at what moment exactly did you know it was time to leave? guest: i left because of the polarization that unfortunately threatens to tear our country apart. i like c-span because you really do just present unfiltered politics and news. if you look around, right now we have these media institutions that are inflaming tensions and polarization in different ways, and i thought that there was a way -- and a need -- to help bring the temperature of our country down. and that is why i left the democratic party to become an independent and start the forward party, which will be this unifying, popular movement to change the incentives of our political leaders to actually respond to the reasonable among us and not the extremes on either side. because right now if you look at the numbers independence --

independents outnumber registered democrats and republicans almost two to one. we know that point of view is often getting lost. host: what part of being part of a major party was inflaming to you, particularly the democratic party? guest: i mean, i did not feel particularly inflamed, i suppose. [laughter] i was a democrat for 26 years. ever since i could register to vote. but right now we are seeing a dysfunctional system where we are not able to get anything 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 paper, that's it 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 >> says ben's washington journal. every day we take your -- sees's washington journal. everyday we take your calls live on the air. thursday morning, yahoo! finance reporter discussing the euro reserve's -- the federal reserve's role in policy and accused of insider trading. we will look -- then washington

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