Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang spoke to Fox News Digital this week in South Carolina where he is campaigning for Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips’s primary bid against President Biden and said former President Trump would win the election if it were held today.
‘There are a lot of voters who are quite negative about Joe Biden, including independents in Wisconsin and Arizona and Georgia and Michigan, who are going to essentially decide the race in November, and that’s where our attention should be focused,’ Yang told Fox News Digital this week. ‘But most Democratic insiders are content to say, Joe, Joe, Joe, essentially, regardless of the numbers.’
‘I had some conversations like that in South Carolina over the last number of days where people would actually come to me and say, do you really think Joe could lose to Trump? And I would say, not only could he lose to Trump, but if the election were held today, he would lose to Trump and the poll numbers are generally getting worse, not better.’
Yang told Fox News Digital he recently had ‘very edifying conversation with South Carolina primary voters’ while campaigning for Phillips in the Palmetto State and ‘one of the sharpest discussion items was, will Joe Biden be well positioned to win in November?’
Yang said the voters were all ‘middle-aged African American women’ and that ‘half the table’ believed Biden was not well-positioned to win.’
‘I happen to agree with that half,’ Yang said.
Yang also had sharp criticism for the DNC who he said is not promoting ‘democracy’ in this nomination process.
‘The most extreme thing the DNC has done to stifle democracy is canceling the primaries in Florida and North Carolina and attempting to do so in another state or two,’ Yang said. ‘I mean, it’s ridiculous to talk about championing democracy on one hand and then literally canceling primaries on the other. So if Democrats want to practice democracy, that would involve having debates. That would involve having genuine competitive primaries. That would involve giving the people a choice.’
Yang continued, ‘If Democrats did have a real competitive primary, for example, where the bosses were to say to Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer and J.B. Pritzker and others, please do run. Then you would have a genuine field, as opposed to this coronation that, in my view, threatens to lead us directly back to a Trump presidency.’
When asked why more prominent Democrats, including Democrats who ran for president along with Yang in 2020, aren’t speaking out more vocally about concerns over Biden’s candidacy, Yang likened his nomination to a ‘coronation.’
‘If you look at the candidates from 2020 in the Democratic field, a very significant number of them are either in the Biden administration or essentially in the Biden administration as Democratic electeds in Washington and the word went out to everyone in the Democratic Party that no one should challenge Joe for fear of their career,’ Yang said.
‘A lot of Democrats, you can tell, are just positioning themselves for 2028 including Gavin Newsom, who was in South Carolina this past number of days and saying, okay, like, ‘I will heed the word of the establishment and wait four years and risk throwing the country to Trump who is beating Joe Biden in most every national poll and in the all important swing states,’ so I think it’s like a blend of self-interest and conformity,’ Yang continued.
‘That’s what’s leading a lot of people getting out of Joe’s way,’ he added. ‘It’s one reason why I admire Dean Phillips so much for doing what he thinks is right for the country even though there were many people in the party who told him not to.’
Dean Phillips earned about 20% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary where President Biden was not on the ballot and won 63.9% as a write-in candidate which Yang referred to as ‘staggeringly impressive.’
‘It was an awesome achievement and also a clear sign of an appetite for a competitive primary for Joe Biden,’ Yang said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the DNC for comment.