A lot happening in the Yang Gang this week. On the day of the last qualifying poll, everyone was eagerly awaiting the results. There were a bunch of rumors that the Monmouth poll would qualify Yang. They turned out not to be true. A bunch of people were really mad. The day before, Yang had put out a video where he was asked about his dad joke. He told a story about how he told his sons that when they were upset, they could say the magic words, “Whatever, it’s cool!” and everything would be better. So people were quoting that everywhere.
But within hours, the Quinnipiac poll qualified Yang, and everyone forgot about how mad they were.
Yang himself found out that he qualified while he was in the middle of an interview. His campaign manager, Zach held up a piece of paper saying "4%! We’re in! " on the other side of a glass enclosure where Yang was interviewing with the Des Moines Register. When the interviewer asked about whether he will qualify, he calmly said that he just did.
There was a lot of press about Yang qualifying for the December debate since that made him one of 7 candidates making the debate.
Christopher Hale (Hale is a Democratic politician from Tennessee; he has been a Catholic nonprofit executive and helped lead faith outreach for President Barack Obama. from Time.com) tweeted this:
Saagar Enjeti did a piece on The Hill, Saagar Enjeti: Yang qualifies for debate, changes politics forever, basically saying that the way Yang made it to the debate without much media coverage changed the way politics is done.
Yang released his health care plan. A medical student seemed pleased. A doctor liked parts of it but thought other parts weren’t so clear. Some people felt that the insurance part needed more clarity.
The SEIU (labor union) put out a statement explaining parts of Yang’s health care plan.
538 put out a piece about the composition of the Yang Gang. It concluded, by looking at donor numbers from Q2 and Q3 that the Yang Gang is comprised of young males. Whoopi on The View commented on that. But I don’t think it’s true as to the male part. I’d believe it if it was in Q2 and the first part of Q3, but since then, the gap has started to ease a bit. The latest qualifying poll has males and females as equal. As for the young part, there’s a bit of progress there, but it’s still mostly true. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one is that older people often get their news from outlets like MSNBC where Yang is blacked out. The campaign is trying to get around that through ads and other avenues.
Two days before the debate, PBS put out an ad for the debate. The tweet read “The stage is set: 7 presidential contenders will take your questions in the last Democratic Debate of 2019. Watch the @NewsHour/@POLITICO Democratic Debate on Thursday at 8/7c.” But Yang was not in the video. After a lot of complaints, PBS apologized and put up a new video with Yang included.
In the meantime, an Emerson poll was released with Yang at 6%. In that poll, 38% of Yang supporters had not voted before. And again, the gap between men and women is closing.
I really like this video of a Next Big Idea podcast that Yang did. The interviewer was for UBI and brought up some of the secondary benefits and while he asked some of the same standard questions, he seemed to know that the questions were already answered.
According to an Iowa journalist, Douglas W. Burns,
Yang made a holiday appearance on The Ellen show. When Ellen announced that her audience would be on for 12 days of Christmas next year, Yang seemed to enjoy the crowd’s reaction.
Colbert did a piece on the whipped cream incident. Zach, Yang’s campaign manager and wearing a big down coat, pulled Yang away from continuing. Colbert called Zach a staffer and made it seem like this was the responsible thing to do. He called Zach ‘Big Coat Guy 2020.’
For the rest of the week, the Yang Gang called Zach ‘Big Coat Guy’.
Ellen DeGeneres took credit for the whipped cream incident, saying that Yang was copying her. Yang was on her show and announced that she was giving away cans of whipped cream to the audience.
The 6th Democratic debate is on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019.
On the day of the debate, Donald Glover is holding a pop-up event fundraiser (love that logo) for Andrew Yang. Childish Gambino Announces Andrew Yang Fundraiser