At least Andrew Yang eventually got an invite, even if it turned out to be a bit of a sham. According to former presidential hopeful and heterodox pacifist Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic National Committee didn’t even offer some facade of a fig leaf to the outgoing Hawaii congresswoman to speak at this year’s convention.
You’re correct – I was not invited to participate in any way. https://t.co/zQBOQB8Zw7
— Tulsi Gabbard ? (@TulsiGabbard) August 20, 2020
Yang, the New York entrepreneur whose quixotic presidential bid outlasted multiple governors, senators, and congressmen, only earned an invite after voicing his dismay to his vast grassroots following. And even though he was offered a formal speaking slot on the final night of the virtual convention, Yang was relegated to act as a digestif, phasing out of a cringeworthy intro to serve setups to the fourth emcee of the convention, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
From a purely strategic perspective, this seems likely to prove about as massive a faux pas as possible at a convention sans an obvious gaffe, if only because of the viscosity of Yang’s base and the importance of Joe Biden’s appeal to voters who sat out 2016.
Let’s start with some statistics. As recently as a month before the Iowa caucuses, Bernie Sanders stirred Democratic ire for an Emerson poll that found 16% of his followers declared they would not support the eventual Democratic nominee, regardless of who it was. But a staggering 42% of Yang supporters said the same, obviously a less vast portion of voters overall given the sheer scope of Sanders’s followers but still a sizable of followers for either the Democratic nominee or President Trump to acquire.
And perhaps more importantly, both Yang and Gabbard cut across crucial cultural lines. Both were two of the only three, the third being Sanders, presidential contenders invited onto the ultra-popular Joe Rogan Experience. Yang’s followers consisted of plenty of young, Very Online men, but also, per my own reporting, many young mothers, happy to see their unpaid labor treated as culturally valued. And although Gabbard is unabashedly leftist as a matter of economics, those principles clearly followed through her own religion and respect for the unborn, reflected in her rejection of late-term abortion.
Biden currently has a much stronger and steadier lead than his predecessor, so this race is his to lose. But the DNC would be wise to overlook its hubris and perhaps try to appeal to the young renegades who only passed upon their ballots because of grassroots gamblers such as Yang and Gabbard.
