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"The only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos." -Jim HIghtower

"[T]he Forward Party has a, not left or right, but forward stance on even the most divisive and contentious issues,” Yang said.

And you ask the salient question: What does that even mean?

I would frankly submit that "left vs right" is meaningless. It says nothing. "Progressive" implies forward (and hopefully upward) movement, "conservative" implies holding back. (Which is why I don't call today's Republicans conservative, but rather reactionary. But that's a comment for another post.) There's nothing about which geographical direction you go when you come to a fork in the road, although I'll also submit that if you take the center, between the forks, you'll get nowhere fast.

Yang doesn't get to define "forward." We've already done that, thanks very much.

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Motto should read: Not left, Not right but Lost in Space.

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It interesting to me because abortion is an issue where you really can get out out: "forward."

If you set twin goals to respect women's rights and lower abortion rates, that is quite possible. You could make a campaign plank that twinned those goals. You could promise that after 50 years of the abortion debate creating a lot of noise, your party

This, imho, is a framing error on the part of the Democrats. Over and over, I hear Democrat-aligned people insulting Pro-Life for not being really Pro-Life. We use this fact as an insult, like an artillery shell: we blast Republicans for hypocrisy. This isn't going to sound like an invitation: we're not inviting people who believe that life starts at conception (which has nothing to do with women's rights ... yet) to join us and take a lead on all the things that could lower abortion while empowering women. Democrats are actually *doing* many of these things, but we're not leading, we're not inviting people who are pro-life-in-their-hearts to have a real place in the movement, constrained "only" by treating women as fully human. We used to say "rare" but we didn't make it seem like we really meant it... even while implementing the policies. When we talk about all the ways to lower abortion rates that actually increase choices and empower women, 99% of the time it seems we are >>>attacking<<< Pro-Life for hypocrisy, not >>>inviting<<< the people who run the church soup-kitchen to join us and find 997 ways to lower abortion that aren't about making it punished, unsafe or expensive.

Both Yang's new party and the Democrats are not trying to fully engage those honestly-pro-life voters who are being manipulated by the political-Pro-Life movement. We're both trying not to have conversations with people who are inclined to be Pro-Life but might *also* be willing to respect women's rights to privacy.

Imagine what would happen if the Democrats had a speaker at their convention who was single mother — who *chose* to do what the Pro-Life side demands (with prison terms and lack of medical care as the teeth to their demands), and talking about all the things that could have helped her plan her pregnancy or be better able to be a single mom if it came to that. Go out and go forward on being a party that would like to reduce abortions and be the party that will do more and do it better, while also being absolutely 100% in favor of empowering women and unwilling to put a tiny toe over that line. It would be hard for the GOP to digest. But it has to be an invitation, not an attack, to be believed and change votes.

https://cognitivepolitics.org/sites/default/files/ftpbook/cp_draft.pdf#page=104

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