12 Wild Hours With Andrew Yang

[brooklynite]

Politico

The candidate moves slowly, inching his way toward the food platters splayed out on folding tables before us. He wants to share his innermost thoughts. But he also wants to eat.

It’s February 3, 2020, the day Iowans kick off the presidential nominating contest with a coordinated series of caucus meetings. In thousands of schools and libraries and community centers across the state, voters will declare their first choice, then cajole one another and possibly consider a second choice, a tradition that is storied and complex and altogether stupid. No candidate is permitted to say this, of course, lest they risk losing the support of said Iowans. But all of them are thinking it. They are confused—especially tonight, because as of eight o’clock, not a single official result has been reported.

Andrew Yang doesn’t know what to think. He does know that he’s hungry. It’s been a long day. Actually, it’s been a long week, a long month, a long three years since the entrepreneur and political neophyte launched the unlikeliest of campaigns for president. In the most crowded (and allegedly most talented) field in Democratic Party history, Yang was destined to be a footnote, the tie-less, tech-savvy Asian guy with crazy ideas and crazier supporters.

And yet somehow, even as candidates with audacious pedigrees and lifelong designs on the presidency fell by the wayside, Yang survived. More than that, he thrived, raising ridiculous sums of money and generating a grassroots enthusiasm nearly unparalleled in the post-Obama era of the Democratic Party.