As many 8Asians readers may know, I’m a big fan of The Daily Show, so I was happy to see that Taiwanese American presidential candidate Andrew Yang interviewed on the show (rather than simply be in a comedic sketch). I’ve had the opportunity to interview Yang back in the Summer of 2018, as well as read his book, ‘The War on Normal People‘ (which is kind of depressing if you ask me.)
One of the reasons why I like Yang is that I think that it is extremely important that Asian Americans get involved in the political process – especially with our president espousing racist rhetoric against people of color Congresswomen to “go back.” As I attend a lot of political events and protests, rarely do I see any Asian Americans – and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (which in the 2010 census put Asians at almost 25% of the 9 county region). The more involved Asian Americans are civicly, over time, the less we will perceived as the ‘perpetual foreigner.‘
Although there are over 20+ Democratic presidential candidates currently, Yang, for someone who is an outsider with fairly low name recognition, is qualifying both in donors:
“Presidential candidate Andrew Yang reached the donor requirement for the third and fourth Democratic primary debates.
Yang’s campaign announced Monday afternoon that the long-shot candidate surpassed the necessary 130,000 individual donors and 400 per state unique donors in at least 20 states.”
and is polling quite well to maintain his involvement in the Democratic presidential primary debates:
Best of luck to Yang in the next debate and many debates to follow!
