Buzzfeed: 'Andrew Yang could win this thing'

SCREEN CAPTURE /CNN

Andrew Yang during the CNN-moderated debate last summer.

For the first time in this long primary season, a national media outlet has admitted that Andrew Yang has a fighting chance to win the Democratic nomination to run against Donald Trump.

Buzzfeed's headline, "Andrew Yang Could Win This Thing" comes after fundraising figures were released Thursday that showed the candidate's campaign raised $16.5 million in the last three months of 2019, which should be enough to allow him to stay in the race all the way to the Democratic Convention this July in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I tweeted a while ago that this is the simulation where we win — and that’s what it feels like now,” Andrew Yang told Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith between campaign stops in New Hampshire Thursday night.

“I get asked all the time whether I expected to be here,” Yang said. “And the truth is that I did.”

Yang's surprising showing -- most pundits didn't expect him to be around at this stage of the game -- might be an indication that donors, and perhaps voters, are not satisfied with the top tier candidates, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.

For those still undecided, Yang, who regularly polls better than seasoned politicians Cory Booker, Amy Klobucher  and Tulsi Gabbard and billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, may be an option. He is definitely not a conventional politician and hasn't fully embraced the far-left policies to which the GOP has attached the socialist label.

Realistically, Yang still has big hurdles in front of him. He needs to expand his base, mostly made up of young males and Asian Americans, according to AAPI Data. Besides the undecided voters, his campaign is hoping to attract those Trump voters who regret their 2016 choice and moderate Democrats who don't want their ultimate choice to go too far to the left. 

“It’s a completely new universe that we are speaking to,” said his campaign chief Nick Ryan, who pointed to some 400,000 individual donors. “No matter how passionate a small base of support is — they’re not going to get you $16 million. These are folks who aren’t all on blue-hat twitter.”

One of Yang's senior aides summed up to Buzzfeed that Biden, Warren, and Sanders “are running like it’s 1996.” Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, the aide said, “are running like it’s 2008. We’re running like it’s 2030.”

Buzzfeed concludes: "He's got a shot." A long shot to be sure, but if the stars align and he finishes strong in Iowa in New Hampshire, Yang may still surprise those pundits and media who have not taken him seriously thus far.

I’m Asian and the first In my family to graduate from college

THIS IS the time of year when high school seniors and community college transfers send out their applications for college. I was reminded of my experience as the first in my immediately family to graduate from college (University of California, Berkeley) by this Buzzfeed video by Heather Yang, the mother of Hudson Yang, who stars in the Fresh Off the Boat sitcom.

I can't remember the time when I was NOT going to college. As the youngest of three children and the most "Americanized," it was always assumed that I would go to college to become an architect.

I was in first grade when I boldly stated to my parents of my career goal. FIRST GRADE! What did I know?

It wasn't until later that I figured out the reason I chose architecture was because my older brother wanted to be a draftsman and I asked my dad, who was in the Army Corps of Engineers, who would be a draftsman's boss. When he said, "architect," my future was mapped out. Ahh, sibling rivalry ...

My sister, who dropped out of the University of Washington to get married and sacrificed her dream of becoming a nurse to raise her kids, accompanied me to the dorm. She was more exicited than I was, I think ... reliving her first year at the UW dorms.

As a transfer student at Cal, the enormity of my acceptance to the best public university in the world didn't hit me until after I arrived and began walking through campus. I kept thinking, the best and brightest were at this school, so what was I doing here?

I came from a small town with one high school where everybody knew everybody and here I was on a campus almost as large as my entire hometown.

Over there Martin Luther King spoke; here the Free Speech Movement was launched; John F. Kennedy spoke there. It was a bit overwhelming. If not for the friends I made at the dorm, I think I would have been lost. There was no thought of dropping out (except when I received a "D" in one of my engineering classes).

There were the anti-war protests, the Third World Strike, more anti-Vietnam demonstrations, the draft that hung over all of us, militancy of the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets, the environmental and women's lib movements were born out the cauldron of change, and every Spring there was the smell of tear gas in the air as one walked through Sproul Plaza.

National Guard soldiers were a common sight when I attended the University of California, Berkeley.

My education included late night discussions (that seemed important at the time) and poker games, all-nighters in cold Wurster Hall (College of Environmental Design), free donuts at the local Catholic church, Thursday night beer at Kips to kick off the weekend, and walking through campus after my ROTC class while still wearing my Army uniform and desperately searching for some justification for Vietnam and what I was feeling in my heart overruling my intellectual quest.

In that bastion of learning, I gained a  lot of knowledge about right and wrong, how people think, about getting along with all kinds of people, but one of most important lessons was that despite my initial feeling of inadequacy and being an outsider (an extension of my high school experience), I discovered a lot about myself. I had found a place populated by fellow outsiders on similar journeys. At that particular place and time ... I belonged.

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