On Tuesday, February 11th 2020 Andrew Yang had dropped out of the presidential race. Yang’s platforms mainly focused on his universal basic income policy where the government would give 1,000 a month to every American age 18 or older who wanted it. This would help people who lost their job due to automation or new careers pay for “exploring their creative side, and spend more money in the communities where they lived ''. Yang said that the cost of this plan, which many are estimated to be in the trillions would be funded by a Value Added Tax.
Yang’s longevity of his campaign was a surprise to many Americans since he had outlasted many
sitting senators and governors. His campaign wasn’t very well known until they had announced
that they raised $9.9 million in the third quarter with another $16.5 million the following quarter.
However, despite all this he had only gained about 1% of the raw vote from Iowa and no delegates,
thus prompting him to drop out.
I personally wasn’t following Yang very closely until I had seen an interview done where Yang
addressed his lack of media coverage, such as a time when CNN had left off Yang in an election poll
graphic sometime in mid 2019 and another instance where he was called “John Yang” on MSNBC.
While both of these two were accidents (I believe) and not done out of intent and things likes this
can happen. The show apologized and corrected their error to which Yang accepted their apology.
Still, even though this might not be seen as important to others I still wonder if this would’ve
happened to any other candidate.
I’m not sure if Yang continued how much support he would have or would have gathered,
but his political support had seemed to consist of mainly young and male voters and now
many people are speculating that his departure from the election could potentially help
Senator Bernie Sanders numbers.
Additionally, as a fun fact CNN reported that they have added Yang as a political
commentator so we can expect to see more of him for the remainder of this race!
- Do you think that Andrew Yang dropping out would help other candidates' numbers?
- Do you think that Andrew Yang would run again for the 2024 presidential election?
- How much of an effect do you think media coverage has upon a candidate and their campaign?
- Can a lack of media coverage prompt their actions in dropping out of the race?
6 comments:
I'm not sure if Andrew Yang's dropping out would help the other candidates tremendously with their own campaigns because it didn't seem that he a significant amount of support seeing as he dropped out pretty early on in the election process. According to a poll for the democratic candidates, https://www.politico.com/2020-election/democratic-presidential-candidates/polls/, he had about 7% of the Democratic votes. Now perhaps if all of this support voted solely for another candidate, that may help a specific individual but it is unlikely so 7% spread out may not help the others significantly.
Any time a candidate drops out of a race, a majority their supporters, no matter how small in number, join another campaign. People actively involved in politics will always continue to be involved, very few will be discouraged from voting/participating as a whole. Especially considering the importance of voting in this election, the election that could possibly unseat enemy number one for the Democrats, President Trump. And while Yang did have some unique ideas he still falls under the broad Democratic banner where his former supporters can find similar racial, climate, and healthcare justice policies to back. Even though he was polling low, I think the loss of Yang is a big one. The loss of Yang in the election is the continued loss of diversity in the election. There are more billionaires in the race than there are racial minorities. The time where only white people could govern America has ended, and yet, you wouldn't be able to tell in this election or most other recent elections (with the notable exception of 2008 and 2012). While racial minorities are (supposed to be) substantively represented by the president, a descriptive representative, with a similar background, is always a better legislator for their wants and needs that may not be yet accounted for (aka white people are over represented in terms of the presidency). This is a big problem, and thus, I do hope Yang (and other potential minority president candidates) will run again. The task is now on the remaining candidates to, when elected, appoint minority officials to cabinets seats and judicial positions to best insure representation of every American, for every American.
It's only logical that Andrew Yang dropping out of the race will help one of the other candidates; just because he drops out probably doesn't mean his supporters won't vote for any other candidate - that's irrational and petty. I don't know if he will run again, however. I watched one video about Yang's gun policy, and what he was detailing was an expensive idea that I can't imagine many people supporting. Knowing that he was going to increase taxes and give away money as a policy to help people, although noble, doesn't make me think he would or will be super supported by the majority of the people. I think media coverage is incredibly important regarding a presidential campaign - that's the only place people get the info, unless they are associated/working with a campaign. For real. Media entails not only social media and the internet, but television, newspapers, etc. If media coverage didn't include anything about a specific candidate's campaign, how are people going to learn anything about it? It's unlikely a person will go the lengths to attend rallies or whatever to hear a candidate speak. I think that a lack of media coverage could contribute to a candidate's dropping out, because it definitely wouldn't be beneficial to their ratings.
I enjoyed reading these comments that pretty much hit everything. Although yang only had 7% of the democratic votes, does him dropping out of the race change the race? Well, the 7% has to go somewhere, so I think the answer is obviously yes, to some degree. Whether he will run next election or not is really wither he will run, but whether he can get his ideas on money spending off the ground. to answer the last question, i will point out the obvious of example of today; MIKE BLOOMBERG. Thank you very much!
I definitely agree with everyone that Yang dropping out provides other candidates with more supporters, Bernie more than anyone else. Also, from an economic standpoint, current candidates will receive more funding, as Yang's donors will most likely transfer their support to their next presidential option.
To respond to your second question, it's hard to predict whether Yang will run again in the 2024 elections because we cannot fully understand the future political climate. If there is no need for drastic changes, perhaps Yang won't run again. But, if we continue to see a failure to act on dire issues, Yang might throw his hat in the ring again. Of course, media coverage may also affect whether Yang runs again. I think that media coverage is absolutely vital to a candidate's success. Yang's decision to drop out was probably influenced by his lack of coverage and misrepresentation of his campaign. While it may not have been an explicit decision to exclude Yang from the election poll graphic, I think there was definitely an innate bias from the media coordinators, potentially the coordinators' personal biases seeping into what should have been a neutral media coverage.
I also haven’t really been following Yang’s campaign, however, as everyone else has pointed out, his dropping out will have some kind of impact. Previous Yang supporters will presumably throw their support behind another candidate who holds similar views/values as Yang. I think there’s definitely a possibility that Yang would run again in 2024, and I think he would have a fighting chance. As more and more people in our age group become of voting age, there will probably be more liberal-leaning voters, based on the stats we studied last semester. Especially with our generation’s interest in social justice and considering Yang’s more liberal agenda focusing especially on the universal basic income, he might be able to widen his base of support further if he decided to run in 2024.
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