Andrew, you promised us you’d run to the end. Chriscoveries Follow Feb 12 · 4 min read

Andrew, you first reached me when you said your State of The Union would be by a Powerpoint slideshow. I, like the crowd, was taken by how accessible, earnest, and downright dorky you were. Just like us normal people. You were not a polished picture perfect political candidate. Nor were you an inaccessible billionare speaking down to me because you knew best. You were a man who had achieved some reasonable success in your life, and sought to improve the country you loved.

You spoke about how economics is setting rules, and the rules can be changed. You told us about how the rules of the economy change, whether we take control or them or not. And you inspired us with the idea that our fellow citizens are worth more than the rock bottom base of $0 that our economic rules say they are today.

I believe you agreed with me that citizens can only be productive when sheltered, healthy, and educated. And ensuring we have as many productive citizens as possible is of benefit, and potential profit, to every single one of us.

Your words, your ideas, reached us. So we shared your message millions of times over. When you asked for fundraising four hundred thousand of us gave over $30 Million Dollars to your campaign. The majority from people who could least afford to give.

We cheered for you when your mic was cut during debates.

We jeered with you when major news networks worked to blackout your coverage.

In Iowa we rallied to you when no one could make heads or tails of the result.

Tonight in New Hampshire you saw better results than Hubert Humphrey did in ’72, George Wallace in ’72 and ’76, or Robert F Kennedy in ’68.

But it wasn’t enough. Instead, tonight, you gave up.

Despite the fact there were two billionaire campaigns spending 10x what we could, despite the fact almost half the delegates in the race had been decided before any of this began, despite the fact no one could work out if you were worthy of being judged and crowned diverse or not. The #yanggang was buckled in to the bitter end. You stopping the campaign was about the math, but it wasn’t to us.

You could have stopped taking donations, wound the campaign down to a minimum, maybe see it through just to Super Tuesday. Over the past two weeks you saw the thousands of us just wanted to see you and hear you, oval office or not. Just the last week you dragged yourself out of bed to over a hundred events where you saw how much we just wanted to listen to you, shake your hand, be touched by your hope and energy for a moment. Without you we have silence or the noise from candidates that we could never align with.

Tulsi Gabbard however didn’t suspend her campaign when she stopped making the debates, she hasn’t made them in months. She didn’t suspend when her fundraising has slowed to a crawl, or when Hillary Clinton called her “A Russian Asset”. Tulsi Gabbard is still out there having run out of big campaign budget staff crews, she’s still waving her own sign. No, I mean she is waving her own sign outside in 26F weather today in New Hampshire.

Also, From my time in politics I learnt elections are free polling. Good polling is damned expensive so when you run a candidate in a seat you get a practically free survey with a sample size in the millions. Unbeatable.

Andrew, I’m a little like you. We are one of the special few our economy has blessed with a special status: financially independent. If I live on a minimal level, as many working class Americans that donated to you do, I am unlikely to need to ever need to ‘work’ again in my lifetime.

So I was horrified when those who could least afford to do so encouraged others to donate on the premise that a donation to your campaign was an investment which they would reap a return from.

Just two weeks ago your newsletters were guilting those who clicked through to the donation page but never followed through received follow up emails asking if they were sure and that your campaign really needed their donation to leverage momentum.

We knew you weren’t likely to win Andrew, all the way along. Everyone said you were a long shot, but we worked, and we gave anyway. We threw our efforts, and money, on the burning fire that was your campaign to make it burn even brighter for just a moment.

The #yanggang wants you Andrew, we want to keep hearing from you, oval office or not.