Americans who have heard of Andrew Yang would agree that he’s a long shot at best for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

And most voters probably haven’t heard of Yang, although it’s been more than a year since he launched his campaign.

That’s likely to change, though. To qualify for a spot in the Democratic National Committee’s presidential debates, which begin in June, candidates have to muster at least 1 percent in three separate polls and receive donations from at least 65,000 individuals in at least 20 states.

Yang surpassed the latter threshold this week, after visiting Houston over the weekend. And having attended his town hall at the Hilton Garden Inn in Chinatown, I consider that good news. Yang would bring a unique and worthwhile perspective to the debate stage.

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Yang, 44, is an entrepreneur by background and the founder of Venture 4 America. He has never run for any political office before, much less the highest office in the country, and he described himself, at one point during the town hall, as “the anonymous Asian man who wants to give everybody money.”

He was referring to his proposal to provide all Americans with a universal basic income — or, as he calls it, a “freedom dividend” — of $1,000 a month. The idea is a centerpiece of his campaign, and it has elicited skepticism for a number of reasons.

Some Democrats, who have been engaged in an abstract policy debate about the benefits of a universal basic income in the United States for several years, might consider the version Yang’s proposing to be insufficient. A worker who earned $1,000 a month would end up living below the federal poverty line. Republicans would see Yang’s “freedom dividend” as socialistic anyway.

And Americans on both sides of the aisle might be put off by the fact that Yang’s universal basic income proposal has struck a chord with a cadre of disaffected Americans, mostly men, who have taken to dubbing themselves the “Yang Gang” as they promote his candidacy online.

Memes are one of the most important tools in the Yang Gang’s arsenal, and some of the gang’s members are convinced that Yang is sympathetic to the plight of white people, in particular, even though he himself has disavowed all forms of bigotry, and has denied having any affinity for the alt-right.

As Yang’s campaign gains traction, he’ll need to give more attention to how his message is being received in the more insalubrious corners of the internet.

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For now, though, voters might take a few minutes to consider his message. In hearing Yang discuss his policy proposals at the town hall, it was clear that he’s been thinking about the challenges facing the country as a pragmatist, without regard to any underlying ideology — or even politics, really.

Automation, Yang noted, has already wiped out millions of manufacturing jobs across the country; from his perspective, Americans need to be focused on that challenge, as well as realistic about its implications.

“How do we rewrite the rules of the economy so it works for us?” Yang asked, rhetorically.

One way to approach the challenge, he suggested, would be to direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics to focus on metrics such as life expectancy and average household incomes rather than emphasize indicators such as the unemployment rate or national gross domestic product.

And in addition to universal basic income, for example, Yang thinks Americans should be able to earn digital social credits for the unpaid hours they devote to activities that benefit their community.

I wasn’t entirely sold on those proposals — and if Yang were elected president, I’d quibble with the idea that caregiving, for example, should be compensated with digital social credits rather than money.

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It’s been a long time, however, since I’ve found myself entertaining hypothetical quibbles with a longshot presidential candidate’s policy proposals. And so, after the town hall, I donated a dollar to Yang’s campaign.

Democrats are likely to have at least as many contenders for the party’s presidential nomination nomination as the GOP did in 2016. Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke announced his bid on Thursday. Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to enter the fray soon.

In fact, since none of the candidates who have formally launched a campaign is a clear frontrunner for the nomination, some voters are a bit worried that the field is so crowded already.

There’s a risk that Democrats may, after a long war of attrition between commensurately qualified candidates, end up nominating someone who would struggle to consolidate support heading into what will surely be a hard-fought general election campaign.

Still, a candidate like Yang, who’s so clearly focused on the economic challenges facing the country, deserves a hearing — and a spot on the Democratic debate stage.

erica.grieder@chron.com