As I write this it is 9:30 PM in Jacksonville, Florida. I have two windows open on my computer screen; one is a Google doc, and the other is yang2020.com, set to a live stream of a political rally that is happening across the country in Los Angeles where it is still daylight. I have never attended a political rally in the flesh; I have never streamed one until this very moment. But I am watching now.

Andrew Yang is a name I had not heard prior to July 2019. He is a person I knew nothing of until last week. Yet now Andrew Yang is the candidate I most fervently wish to see in the White House and he’s the only candidate in any election cycle to whom I’ve donated. I’d give him my last dollar. In fact, I already have.

When you peruse Yang’s policy page on his campaign’s website there are more than a few standouts and even one or two absolute knockdown, drag outs. He’s unflinching and relentless when he lays out the bones of his beliefs into the sharpest vision among any candidate of what the United States could and should be. Yang is charismatic, he’s real, and the core of his policies ring with one single truth: people matter more than money, more than politics, more than anything.

Perhaps his best known policy is the Freedom Dividend which would designate $1000 monthly ($12,000 yearly) into the pocket of every American citizen over the age of 18. Besides this there are Democracy Dollars — a concept in which each American is allotted $100 apiece to throw behind the candidate of their choice thus ending the money-based power vacuum that mega donors use to keep the nation in a perpetual chokehold.

I know. I know. Every night for the past week I’ve fallen asleep with the gentle thought of what it would be like to wake in another timeline where Andrew Yang is already president. In this sublime vision not much has changed except that my hair is no longer falling out from stress and under some new and otherworldly social contract, Human-Centered Capitalism restores my soul while my mortal body is cared for by Medicare for All.

I go about my day. I am able to work and support myself through school without sinking further into debt. I feel confident and secure in my decision to work on my career because I know I won’t lose everything the moment I choose to have children because Andrew Yang has brought Federally mandated family leave to every American household.

I have not seen a penny in two years.

When I awake from this fevered dream, I’m crushed by immediate feelings of loss that configure themselves swiftly into kindling for the fire in my heart. I put an expo marker in my purse and use it to write Google Andrew Yang on the mirror in every public bathroom I enter. I donate; I ask others to match my donation. I order this fantastic piece of merchandise directly from Yang’s campaign because it’s the best political apparel I’ve seen since those Democrat Donkey crew socks in 2008.

It is now just past midnight in Jacksonville, Florida. The sun has set in Los Angeles, and Andrew Yang has just hit his Q3 fundraising to the tune of a whopping $2 million raised in 9 days amid his constant calls for the American people to move not left, not right, but forward. Hope tastes bittersweet in my mouth; it settles into my mind as heavy and constant as the burden of Atlas. I’m ready to run with Andrew Yang all the way to the White House. I — along with the thousands of others who have recognized his vision — will carry him there myself.