In Andrew Yang, the Internet Finds a Meme-Worthy Candidate | Hacker News Reader

In Andrew Yang, the Internet Finds a Meme-Worthy Candidate

nytimes.com

14 pointsimartin2k11 comments

> He said he was also exploring the possibility of having a lifelike 3-D hologram made of himself that could be carried around battleground states like Iowa on the back of a flatbed truck, allowing Mr. Yang to give a recorded version of his stump speech without being physically present.

With his campaign's emphasis on automation, this is a pretty clever stunt.

Definitely do that once you talk to the Tupac hologram people

Nobody yet used deepfakes for Tupac music videos. Some songs definitely deserve music videos.

Narendra Modi did this in India in 2016 and it was quite popular https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/108039...

Iowa is a key early caucus state that is known for putting a premium on retail politics and direct interaction with candidates, so that seems like the perfect technique to demonstrate to voters there exactly the stereotypical disregard of out-of-touch coastal elites to flyover states.

I love it.

Been following AY for a week or so now and I like a lot of his platform. Even if he doesn’t win the democratic nomination, a few of his ideas need to enter the mainstream in order for them to have a chance:

1. Trump is a result of economic pain more than racism, help the working class, don’t vilify them.

2. A lot of people are getting left behind, we should find ways of helping them out, not abandoning them (for instance changing the electoral college so costal cities can determine the course of the country alone)

There’s more stuff too but he’s smart, articulate, and direct. Should be interesting to see the debates.

#1 is a myth debunked over and over.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economi...

This is based on income alone. Many blue collar jobs pay well. If you look at educational attainment, you can see a wide gulf between Trump supporters and Clinton supporters. That's a better indication of class than income.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of Trump supporter demographics:

https://www.thoughtco.com/meet-the-people-behind-donald-trum...

> Trump is a result of economic pain more than racism,

This is an already popular idea, and as a sibling comment notes one refuted by all factual investigation.

> help the working class, don’t vilify them.

This is, nevertheless, a correct answer (in large part because it is selling an alternative, well-grounded, highly-resonant status threat narrative which there is reason to expect could displace the other as a primary concern, not because economic concerns actually powered Trump). It's also a popular one already in the Democratic Party being the central idea of the Sanders and Warren campaigns, and an important idea for Harris and several other candidates. But it's not something Yang is particularly needed to, or likely to, make a difference in the overall prominence of.

> 2. A lot of people are getting left behind, we should find ways of helping them out, not abandoning them

This is like almost precisely a restatement of the second half of #1, not a separate point.

> (for instance changing the electoral college so costal cities can determine the course of the country alone)

Eliminating the electoral college wouldn't do that, anyhow, unless you expand “coastal” to mean “near any surface or subsurface body of fresh or salt water”. And the disenfranchised—by the EC and/or partisan gerrymandering—residents of the cities (coastal or not), aside from the narrow wealthy elite, are very much being left behind, not least by policies that fail to account adequately for real poverty.

> (for instance changing the electoral college so costal cities can determine the course of the country alone)

why the hell should we give control of the entire country to the coastal cities... what kind of insanity is that

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