But knowing little of his background (e.g. career, wealth, any other attempts at politics), I think it's cool as hell he acted on what must have been a wild "what if" idea to join the race. I'd like to think that the more normal, non-political-machine-produced humans who go through this process, the more accessible and interesting that process will be to the average person.
It seems Yang afigured out how to "hack" the Democratic primary process to get on the national debate stage. I call it a "hack" because someone like me thinks the possibility of a no-namer like Yang on stage with Sanders and Warren is too absurd a reality to imagine. But Yang did his research and found he could target the minimum requirement of having 65,000 donors [0] -- a number that seems laughably low, because of how easy it is today for anyone with a phone/computer to make small donations, coupled with Internet platforms like Reddit that let Yang find voters/donors who aren't willing to provide the traditional value (e.g. large donations), but can make all the difference when the metric is number of people, not cash on hand.
Yang likely has no chance in the primary, so I won't have to wonder if my vote for/against him would have been even slightly biased by subconscious feelings about solidarity with other Asian-Americans. However, I like that I can just marvel at the sight of an Asian-American strolling on this rarefied political stage, like it's a normal thing. And yet, it isn't -- It's something I don't think I ever thought I'd see in my life. Not because I think there's a hard barrier of racial/social injustice. It's just something I had apparently had no reason to imagine or contemplate. Just like I don't ever normally contemplate the idea of 2 cats trying to steer a Tesla. There's nothing that logically blocks that concept in real life. But seeing it in real still feels like a small, happy surprise.
0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/candidates-reach-for...