What Do You Do When No One Takes You Seriously?
Andrew Yang leaned toward me inside his 2020-campaign headquarters, as he compared federal economic policy to baking muffins. He suggested that his progressive 2020 rivals, like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, want to change some ingredients and try again. Yang wants to start from scratch instead.
“The recipe’s not working; this tastes like shit,” Yang said, talking quickly. “Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to make this recipe less shitty,’ it’s like, ‘You know what? Maybe I’m going to bake something else and stop trying to salvage this shit-muffin!’”
He broke out laughing.
“I’ve never used that metaphor,” he explained excitedly. “That’s new!”
Yang, a first-time candidate known mostly for his proposal to give every American a universal basic income of $1,000 a month, is himself new to this whole running-for-president thing. When potential voters watch the first Democratic presidential primary debates next week, arrayed before them will be a former vice president, four U.S. senators, a former governor, a congressman, a mayor, and two people that, polls show, most Americans have never heard of: Yang and Marianne Williamson.
All together, the eight other politicians who will be onstage next Thursday night—to say nothing of the 10 more that will face off the night before—have about 150 years of experience as elected officials. Yang and Williamson have zero. Neither candidate has ever held public office at any level. Each is running the kind of against-the-odds, quixotic campaign that in years past would be.
