‘YANG GANG’ ADDS UP
Dem hopeful touts ‘Freedom Dividend’ at Cambridge rally
The “Yang Gang” flocked to Cambridge Common Monday evening to cheer on 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is trending up in the polls as he rolls out his businessman’s brand of politics.
Clad in blue “MATH” baseball caps and clutching campaign signs emblazoned with the same slogan, hundreds from the entrepreneur’s enthusiastic supporter base — the so-called Yang Gang — joined curious onlookers on the common to hear the Democratic presidential hopeful deliver his pitch on a trickle-up economy and his signature Freedom Dividend.
“Donald Trump’s solutions were unfortunately garbage and nonsense,” Yang said. “We have to accelerate our economy and society as quickly as possible. We have to evolve in the way we think about work and value. We have to do the opposite of what Donald Trump said — and I am the ideal candidate for that job because the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.”
Some voters said Yang might be the president that was promised with Trump, but never delivered.
“I feel America has really been looking for someone to fundamentally change a broken system. That’s why I think a lot of people voted for Trump, they thought he could change that,” said Dennis Butzen of Groton.
Yang said Trump “is not himself the cause of all the problems, he’s a symptom, he’s a manifestation.”
Butzen’s wife, Milagros Vitor-Butzen, said she believes Yang could be the leader to unite voters by being “focused on solutions,” not ideologies.
Adam Wong of Cambridge said Yang “pulls together a group of people that I think is the coalition needed to win the next election,” including moderates on both sides of the aisle.
“I think he has a great chance because he’s a moderate Democrat that doesn’t have these policies that draw these visceral reactions out of people. He’s not a socialist, he’s a moderate on the Green New Deal,” Wong said, with a nod to top-tier candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Those are showstoppers, a lot of people wouldn’t vote for those.”
Yang, a political newcomer, has recently moved to the middle tier of the Democratic pack. A Franklin Pierce University-Boston Herald poll of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters put Yang at 5.2% support, edging out South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who had 4.5%. And Yang raised $1 million after the third Democratic debate last week.
Yang has the brains to back up his message, his supporters say. His stump speech was peppered with numbers, but instead of overloading voters with math, Suzanne Percy of Stoneham says it makes the issues affecting Americans “just make sense.”
Her husband, Mack Percy, believes strongly in Yang’s signature policy — the universal basic income that would give every American over age 18 $1,000 per month.
“Having medical coverage is irrelevant if you can’t put a roof over your head,” Percy said. The Freedom Dividend, he said, “gives people a little bit of breathing room.”