It’s not ALL of Weezer here today. Front man Rivers Cuomo, who has conquered the formidable job of songwriting with a little math of his own, appears on stage in a suitably Rivers Cuomo–esque knit sweater. He’s joined by bassist Scott Shriner, along with a friend of the band behind the kit instead of regular drummer Patrick Wilson, who may still be held in Miss Piggy’s captivity. Guitarist Brian Bell also stayed home, as did Cuomo’s own electric guitar. For this rally, Cuomo is pulling a reverse Dylan and playing the hits on a small acoustic guitar—so small it almost qualifies as a toy. Bell has fingerless gloves on, but Cuomo, like me, is going au naturel with his hands. This will not deter him from melting your face off with his Melissa & Doug guitar. He lets out a wry falsetto “Yang Gang in the house!” battle cry for the crowd to cheer, and then the band is off and shredding.

Again, no “Hash Pipe.” To my personal disappointment, no “Burndt Jamb” either. Cuomo also avoids, likely unwittingly, some of his early songs that revolved around his horniness for Asian women. But in a tidy eight-song set that runs well under an hour, he and Weezer still manage to fire off pretty much everything else you’d want to hear: “Buddy Holly,” “The Sweater Song,” “Island in the Sun,” the “Africa” cover, etc. Mid-set, Cuomo says, “Only one place left to go from here, and that’s ‘No Scrubs.’” And then they play “No Scrubs.”

While they do, I huddle in a nearby alcove next to the men’s room to make sure I haven’t yet contracted pneumonia. Momentarily sheltered, I sip vital tea and yap with a dude named Christo (not the artist!), who flew here from Charlotte. “Flights were really cheap out here for some reason,” he tells me. “$139 round-trip. I was like, ‘Okay, I have to do it.’ I think I have a good career. I have a good salary. But I am not happy. If I have a freedom dividend, I can pick my own path and I have that stability knowing that I can do it.”

Yes, he swore. Yang wears profanity well. That’s my kind of asshole right there.

Onstage, Rivers Cuomo doesn’t stump for Yang. He doesn’t pause between mildly heavy, rock-in-deliberate-quotation-marks covers of ’80s pop classics to extol the virtues of UBI. He doesn’t need to, because during the last song, “Say It Ain’t So,” Yang himself appears on stage — with a scarf but sans necktie, the latter being a signature element of his casual Friday campaigning style — to raucous cheers of approval. Yang does a little bit of air guitar and then busts out a confident Jesus pose as Weezer closes out their set. Now it’s time for the headliner to bust out his own greatest hits. Yang’s opening number is a solid one:

“You don’t look like the fucking internet to me!”

Yes, he swore. Yang wears profanity well. That’s my kind of asshole right there. He’s extremely comfortable up on the stump. So much of politics is convincing people that you’re not a politician, and Yang is extremely good at that. The New York Post said, “Yang knows how to break through by speaking like a regular person.” And they’re right! He does know how to do that, and it’s nice! It’s also fucking weird that you can stand out among leaders by doing that! One lady at the rink says to me, “He’s just a PERSON!” Another man, John, tells me, “He seems sincere, like he really meant the message that he’s saying to the people.” These are golden banalities for a candidate to possess. Not everyone in this crowded field has them. Few, actually.

Please note that Yang is actually a bit off in his assessment of the crowd. It’s not an analog bunch. After all, it does have Steve. It’s also a relatively young and diverse crowd featuring hundreds of out-of-staters, along with an encouragingly large number of black and Asian American Yang fans. (This is 90% white Iowa, after all.) I went to another campaign rally in Iowa back in 2015. A Trump rally. It was littered with angry pickup-truck owners and old folks who looked like they lived to hear the burp of a Rubbermaid container. It was whiter than the walls of an Apple store.

You could make some TikToks with this crowd. One dude is wearing a jacket with the Tesla logo on it, because why wouldn’t he?

By contrast, Yangapalooza is filled with people who very much LOOK like they’ve enjoyed a Joe Rogan podcast. A number of them self-identify as dreaded “libertarians.” They absolutely vape. They dole out the requisite WOOS and HELL YEAHS when a Yang surrogate onstage advocates legalizing drugs. They are of gang-appropriate age. You could make some TikToks with this crowd. One dude is wearing a jacket with the Tesla logo on it, because why wouldn’t he? This crowd looks quite a bit like the internet, if you ask me. But that’s not gonna stop Yang, the tech candidate, from engaging in some grunt-work retail politics.

“I’m proud to introduce a very special guest,” he tells everyone. “I think some of you have been waiting to meet her for quite some time.”

Can you guess who it is? I think you can.

“Let’s give a warm Yang Gang welcome to my wife, Evelyn Yang. Happy birthday, dear Evelyn!”

This is Evelyn Yang’s first appearance on the campaign stage. Quick, someone keep Rivers Cuomo away from her! Yes, internet: Andrew Yang is, indeed, a Wife Guy. “Evelyn is the secret weapon,” he says. “I definitely married up.”

There is much rejoicing. Evelyn declares her love for the Yang Gang and then hands the mic back to her husband so he can get down to business, tossing out plant-based meat for his people. Evelyn is the secret weapon, yes, but she’s also a MOM. He’s not a career politician like all those other bureaucrats. He’s gonna win the election, but he needs your help. He’s gonna go to D.C. and unclog the pipes that are stuffed with money. (Remember: We’re talking pipes here, not swampland… whole other metaphor.)

One fan tells me that, at another rally he attended, Yang personally helped him search for his lost phone.

This is not a new speech from Yang. One fan tells me he’s heard variations of the speech a thousand times, but it never gets old to him. When your fans don’t get tired of the stump speech, that’s no small accomplishment. As Trump proved during his shockingly indefatigable campaign back in 2016, the purpose of a rally speech isn’t to convince you of a candidate’s worthiness. It’s to fire up your supporters so they then go out and do the convincing for you. And not just by cold-calling and knocking on unsuspecting doors, where the attempts at conversion are transparent, but in casual conversation with friends, family, and any other friendly Iowa stranger ready to make small talk. That’s the secret sauce of any movement: people campaigning even when they’re not really campaigning, willing to live their devotion to something/someone and not just sell it.

As Elaine said, a lot of us are powerless unless we vote, but often voting isn’t enough. Voting, more often than not, is merely the final, formal step in a much more intensive and years-long battle of attrition. Yang is keenly aware of this and lays it all out in detail for the crowd. He makes the situation sound inspiring. In reality, it’s a horrifying summation of how the fate of American democracy got randomly portioned out to a handful of random Denny’s customers in the Midwest. But that’s the cost of doing business when you run for president right now. You have to accept these awful constraints and then get your fans to do likewise. You have to find a way to make the unpalatable sound palatable.