Just one day after Andrew Yang’s $10 million fundraising milestone was snubbed by mainstream media outlets like CNN, his followers have taken to Twitter to trend the “YouTubeAndrewYang” hashtag. Along with the hashtag, many of his Yang Gang supporters are posting videos of their favorite Yang speech or event on the video-sharing website. Notably, American actress and liberal activist Alyssa Milano used the hashtag on Twitter to promote the 44-year-old entrepreneur’s appearance on her Sorry Not Sorry podcast scheduled for Monday.
Although the hashtag push was planned before Yang’s snub, his exclusion appears to have invigorated his supporters to take to the internet — where his campaign received its first exposure to the mainstream via The Joe Rogan Experience podcast — and promote their candidate without the help of television broadcasters.
Outside of his supporters, Yang’s snub was not lost on political commentators.
“@AndrewYang raised $10 million why is Booker on screen and not him? @CNN, your bias is astounding and disgusting. You don’t get to pick “the serious candidates”, the people do. You owe him an apology,” tweeted progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski of his eponymous online radio show.
“The silver lining for Andrew Yang is that the establishment media so blatantly ignoring him is going to end up bring more voters into the #YangGang,” tweeted Emma Vigeland, another progressive commentator and a host of The Young Turks .
Vigeland may be right. Yahoo Finance reports that Yang has the most fundraising momentum, with a 257 percent quarterly jump from $2.8 million to $10 million in the third quarter, topping Trump’s massive quarterly gain as well as fellow Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson, who came the closest to Yang with a 100 percent quarterly jump. Given that Yang’s exclusion has happened many times before and often prompts the spread of hashtags from supporters, they could be helping his campaign as Vigeland says.
Regardless, Yang’s campaign looks to be here to stay for a while to come.
“This grassroots fundraising total, with more than $6 million in the bank, ensures this campaign will have the funding to compete and outperform expectations through Super Tuesday and beyond,” said Zach Graumann, Yang’s campaign manager.
Yang is currently in sixth place with 3.5 percent support and has a long way to go to break into the upper echelon of candidates. As of now, he is set to appear in the October debate and needs 3 percent or higher in one more Democratic National Committee-approved poll to take the November debate stage, which he appears poised to do.
