Yang Levels Up - Town Called Dobson 10-5-2019

Make no doubt about it, Yang is an outlier — not just in polling, but pretty much everything. He is certainly unconventional in his approach to politics and is certainly aiming to break the rules. His coming from a successful business background, helping people start their own businesses in the poorest parts of the nation, he has practiced the modern startup mantra of “Disrupt.” I feel that is what he is doing to politics — disrupting the norm.

The media, when they are not blacking him out, really can’t get a handle on him. His talking head accolades range from Van Jones to Tucker Carlson. In the Yang online communities, you have a mix of Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, progressives, libertarians, blue collar, white collar, college grad, GED, people of ALL colors, people from all 50 states and people from all religions. The thing that is most remarkable to me is how these communities are a cross section of America and they are working together toward a common goal. It reminds me of how America used to be, before the blood-curdling divisiveness set in — before Gingrich weaponized religious differences. You know, a UNITED America. Maybe I am just old-fashioned, but that seems pretty important.

Here on DKos, Yang supporters came here, especially after debates and expressed their enthusiasm for their candidate, just like everyone else did. But they were met with derision, disrespect and, sometimes, flat-out contempt. Many never to return. They fled back to the UNITED communities from which they came. The ones that leaned Republican, had everything they previously thought about Democrats confirmed with the open hostility aimed at them here.

Sad. It reminds me of 2016 when the knives were out for Bernie supporters (dead-enders to the owner of this site). In 2016, Sanders was fighting just as hard for us then as he doesfir us now, to the point that it delivered him a literal heart attack. Some on this site saw Bernie fight amidst a small vocal group of DNC advocates as somehow unfair, disrespectful, racist and who knows what all. As I understand it, their butthurtedness ran deep.

We all know Yang started as the longest of long shots but Yang has never had a welcomed shot here. He is not a DNC favorite. Even back in the inaugural 2020 DKos straw poll, he was left out and people wondered where he was at. This last week, Kos published a diary titled, “Andrew Yang would be at 0% if Daily Kos straw poll excluded outside spamming.” If you read through the debate diaries, when a Yang supporter arrived and spoke about Yang, the name-calling started; troll, bot, 4Channer or worse. They never really received the innate respect Warren supporters did. They received the same respect Bernie received in 2016.

So I invite all my fellow Yang Gangers to come here and publish diaries. Make them meaningful. Write about why you feel Yang is the candidate for you. Offer up his videos, his policies and ask the readers to consume that media and make their own conclusion. Above all tell YOUR story. This is what the site does so well, it allows the tapestry of humanity first to be told.

I doubt that will fix the broadsided label of all of us being bots, but I will say, that $10,000,000 that Yang raised in Q3, that didn’t come from thin air. It came from supporters.