Andrew Yang likes to count off the days until you, the voter, can put humanity first.



He stood a weekend ago on the altar of an old Unitarian church, lit up against pale pink walls by a blinding white light and positioned between the Lord's Prayer and Matthew 22 (“THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD”), explaining these diminishing days.

"Your mission in 33 days is to let the rest of the country know that economic value and human value are not the same things,” he said, “that we have intrinsic value as Americans, as citizens, as human beings ourselves."

Then, after a beat, he added, "I'm glad I'm making this case in— I think we're in a church, is that right? At that point, there should've been like a hymn.

"Someone should've been like, BAANNG. Organ."

This is how it went in New Hampshire, a superstructure of frattiness over nerdiness: 33 short days, 32 short days, 31 short days. Now it's 21 short days until New Hampshire. Yang came, really, out of nowhere to raise millions of dollars and outlast governors and senators running for president. But here at the end, he’ll likely just miss being the real deal. The days get longer, and Yang's time grows shorter. Last week, as the debate calmly proceeded without him in Des Moines, he walked through Chicago O'Hare airport. So what will become of Yang, who plays the Smiths and Whitesnake’s "Here I Go Again" before his events?

This may not be a winning strategy right now — cast off that idea — but Yang’s part of a rising new Political Type. If you look at the way technology and the press evolved throughout the 20th century, the kinds of candidates changed with the media. In presentation and deep-down message, Yang shares more with others entering politics in the post-Obama, iPhone era than many 2020 Democrats do.



Admittedly, by his own emphasis, everything with Yang comes back around to universal basic income (UBI), a policy favored by some libertarians, a handful of progressives, and people who believe the federal government's only true talent is writing checks. If you've followed 2020 at all, you've heard that Yang wants to implement a $1,000/month UBI. ("Forevah?" as one woman asked in New Hampshire. Forever!) Next, maybe, you've heard him talk about how artificial intelligence and self-driving vehicles will put more people out of work, including the potential extinction of the American trucker.



Meanwhile, Yang's jokes about himself that trade in Asian stereotypes have gotten laughs from mostly white crowds and deeply angered some people, Asian American and non–Asian American alike. (They also seem to still be top of mind for some noncritics. "I'm Asian and I don't like math," said one New Hampshire voter. This was after she thanked him for bringing compassion to the campaign, and before she launched into a question about prosecuting fossil fuel companies.)



Yang himself has been often ignored by the media, despite drawing not dissimilar polling numbers to Sen. Amy Klobuchar — something evident in New Hampshire, where the number of reporters was a tiny slice of those who follow the top four candidates. This is possibly a function of Yang running on what's perceived as a gimmick, but he has also been subjected to stuff like TV networks putting a different Asian man's photo in his place in an on-air graphic.

So what you've heard about his pitch, if you've heard it, are UBI and the trucker, and maybe the larger discussion about identity. In a way, UBI and the trucker — again by Yang's own emphasis — sell his actual critique of American life a little short.



When he asks (there's a lot of asking and responding at a Yang event) if voters have noticed stores in their town closing, and why this is so, people respond with one voice: Amazon. He talks about the desolation to come via automated trucking, yes, but the other figure whom he discusses at length is the 39-year-old woman who works in retail. What will happen to her if a self-service kiosk or the entire store closing takes her job away? (Nothing good.) Quite a bit of his discussion about AI is premised on data, but also the idea that Donald Trump has deeply, ruinously smeared immigrants.

"How many of you are parents and concerned about your kids being addicted to screens?" he asked a room full of non–Yang Gangers, mostly white people 40 or older, sitting in folding chairs on a warm Saturday night in Dover, New Hampshire. Many raised their hands. "Yeah, me too," he said. "When I was 12, I was a very nerdy kid. But when I went home, I could close the door and feel I was alone and sheltered from the world. Today, that introverted 12-year-old goes home, shuts the door, and is still feeling like their classmates are in the room with them because they can just pull up their phone and see what they're saying and thinking."

The non-UBI point Yang really argues and comes back around to again and again: Gross domestic product and employment aren't adequate measures for the health of the country, economic or otherwise. He threads this in different ways, from rising measures of drug addiction to data about wages and homeownership to the fact that the value of his autistic son should not be based on whether he can find a job that increases the GDP. The point of parents worried about phones started with a question about rising anxiety among teens. One call-and-response at his events: When was the last time life expectancy declined three years running? The Spanish flu.

All this gloom cuts against the other thing he's known for: Yang is the Guy Having Fun Out There.