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Well that escalated quickly…

Three controversial issues rocked the Yang campaign this week! Not really. I’m being overdramatic, but some — both inside and outside the Yang Gang—did get upset at Yang’s comments on Medicare for All (M4A), SuperPACs, and Joe Biden. Let’s get into it.

Medicare for All

Yang clarified his Medicare for All stance last week and said explicitly he did not want to get rid of private insurance. Personally, I believe this is completely consistent with his beliefs in freedom of choice, the free market, and robust public support services. Everyone gets free healthcare, but they also have choices. Some Yang supporters were surprised and upset about this. Friend of the Yang Gang, Krystal Ball, captured the overall sentiment with a video explanation and tweet.

Lucky for us the Yang Gang is reasonable and open-minded. We can have healthy and civil debate about issues and come to understand why we disagree. In this case, Krystal summarized it as a philosophical disagreement of where markets should and should not be allowed. Where should capitalism be kept out of? Not an easy question, but certainly one worth discussing.

SuperPACs

The second issue focused on Andrew’s comment — or lack of comment — on SuperPACs. For those who don’t know — which included me a few days ago — “PAC” stands for Political Action Committee, which allows organizations to donate as much as they want to any campaign they desire (an individual is limited to a maximum of $2,800 political donations to one candidate per election).

SuperPACs can also raise as much money as they want, but they do not donate or work directly with campaigns. SuperPACs are often criticized as a mechanism for money to influence elections.

The official Andrew Yang policy is to “attack dark money in politics” and — as President — “eliminate SuperPACs and vessels for corporate intervention in campaigns.”

I believe it’s best to consider direct source material before making your own judgment. You can listen to Yang’s words yourself, then come to your own opinions about the Huffington Post’s headline and the responses it received from Warren and Sanders.

“Andrew Yang Gives a Thumbs-Up to a Super PAC: Yang will be the only Democratic candidate to embrace an outside group with the ability to raise unlimited funds.” — Huffington Post

Whether you believe Yang is reversing his commitment against SuperPACs or not is up to you. My opinion is he is being consistent with his policy, which is opposing untraceable “dark money” and committing to change the law as President. Opponents want to make it a black and white issue, but the truth is more nuanced:

“Bernie Sanders wants to crack down on outside groups that do political spending, though one is allied with his presidential campaign. Elizabeth Warren has vowed no untraceable ‘dark money’ will help her White House bid, despite being backed by an organization that doesn’t disclose some of its donors.” —Associated Press News

Vice President Yang?

The final topic of the week comes from an excellent interview Yang had with the Washington Post. As a hardcore Yang Ganger, I’m sure you’ve heard Yang’s talking points and catch phrases more times than you can count. This interview is interesting because new topics are discussed and it shows Yang expertly answering a long string of “gotcha” questions. It’s a great interview if you need a Yang Gang confidence boost. That said, some were upset when Andrew said he’d be open to serving on a Biden ticket and the idea has already been talked about:

To me, it’s very obvious that Andrew is going to do everything he can to be President and he’s got a very good chance of winning the whole thing. I also believe Yang and Biden would make a strong team with broad appeal. Ideally, Yang is the visionary leader and Biden provides vital political experience and backing. After all, Joe does have experience as Vice-President…

Demonize away

Is there a Yang Gang culture? How would you describe it? Tweet at us, reply, or comment in the newsletter.

Even though it’s still forming and in its early days, I ask if Yang Gang has a culture because I recently got into an unhealthy twitter debate. It went on too long, took too much brain space, and just made me feel gross when I finally stopped. It wasn’t the first time — and probably won’t be the last time — I ended down a long, dark, and stupid twitter hole. The exchange made me think about why we do this and if we are really any different than the other campaigns? Who or what are we trying to become?

A big difference I’ve noticed between the Yang Gang and the competition is we try our best — though we sometimes fail — not to demonize others. We try to understand the nuance and complexity in each other instead of simplifying the world as “we are good and they are evil.”

To promote healthy online exchanges, I’ve started using the phrase “Demonize Away.” I believe it preempts exchanges from getting ugly and so far it has led to my healthiest twitter debate yet!

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"You don't have to save the world by yourself. In fact, you can't. All you have to do is lay down one brick. All you have to do is make things a little bit better — in a small way — so that other people can lay their brick on top of that — or besides that. And together step-by-step, day-by-day, year-by-year we build the foundation of something better…” –Edward Snowden

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About the author: Ki Chong Tran was born and raised in Los Angeles, but now lives in London with his wife and puppy. Besides the Yang Gang, he also loves blockchain technology and mixed martial arts. His other Yang Gang project is a crypto reward token called Yang Gang Coin.

This newsletter was produced with the help of Arthur Augustyn, a writer based in the New York area. You can visit his website www.featherruffler.com.

This project is not affiliated with the official Yang2020 campaign, which can be found at yang2020.com.