Krystal Ball on Yang’s fundraising haul: ‘Even a random man has a shot at the Oval Office’

Opinion by: Krystal Ball

Well, Yang’s team gave the scoop to CNN, and I get it guys. CNN’s a massive international news juggernaut and we’re just the little show that could but we did get a little bit of a jump on Andrew Yang’s third quarter fundraising numbers. Yang Gang, you all have been working hard out there!

Alright, here we go. This quarter, Andrew raised $10 million. Ninety-nine percent of those donors were small dollar donors and the average donation amount was $30.18. Now, for some context here, this amount demonstrates massive growth for the Yang campaign. Last quarter they raised $2.8 million. Which, I gotta say, at the time, was a really impressive amount for the upstart campaign.

Ten million though? Ten million puts you in the league with the top five heavy hitters. After all, Kamala Harris just announced she raised just a bit more than that this quarter at $11.6 million. Here are the totals we know so far as of this writing. You’ve got Bernie leading the pack at $25 million, Pete falling off a bit, Kamala kind of holding in place, and Cory, who has spent years cultivating Wall Street donors like it was his job, because it was, getting beat by Andrew Yang. That’s to say nothing of Michael Bennett as well.

Time to put a new spin on an oldie but goodie: It’s all fun and games until Andrew Yang passes you in fundraising. Now, I spoke with the campaign and they told me that the biggest spike came after the debate performance with the big Freedom Dividend announcement. You know, the one that the pundits mocked and scorned. Overall though, the team told me the pace was pretty steady. Strong and steady.

Their message to the country? Andrew Yang is here to stay. Here’s the quote from campaign manager Zach Graumann: “this grassroots fundraising total, with $6 million plus in the bank, ensures this campaign will have the funding to compete and outperform expectations through Super Tuesday and beyond.” Guys, I think even MSNBC’s going to have to learn his name.

Here’s what I love about this whole dynamic of Yang’s success. It utterly exposes just how vapid and uninspiring the overwhelming majority of our political leaders really are. I mean think about this. Yang was a complete unknown who the Washington Post famously called a “random man” running on what may as well have been a “random policy” in that U.B.I. was not popular and barely known outside of niche policy circles, to try to tackle a problem in automation that people are just starting to wake up to. By the rules of conventional wisdom, the whole project is an insanity wrapped in an absurdity, which for the record is exactly the kind of shit I’m into. And yet here we are. With Yang inspiring a grassroots movement that not only lights up the Internet on his behalf but has now given him the money and with it the credibility to really and truly compete. Savor this moment Yang Gang because if there’s one thing I know, the media and the establishment respect money more than anything else. Mark my words, this will be a turning point in coverage and in treatment of this campaign.

Meanwhile, the supposed frontrunner has so little grassroots enthusiasm behind him that he just literally gave up on raising money and trying to find supporters online.

In September, Biden’s online spending dropped to 16th place. Get this: he spent less online than two of the candidates who actually dropped out of the race entirely that month! Which would be absolutely hilarious, if not for the fact that Biden could very well end up being the nominee, and then we’re just totally screwed. Another report, this one from Politico back in August, found that Biden raised 60% of his online cash in the first week of his campaign. After that first glowing week, he’s been largely forced to shovel up cash the old-fashioned way: by promising rich people to their faces that nothing will fundamentally change under his administration.

Here’s all I’m trying to say: if a random man with a random policy idea can inspire enough people to fund a grassroots campaign, what the hell is the excuse of all these other people? If your campaign can’t stand without selling your political soul to big donors, consider the possibility that your campaign is less about selling us something tasty and more about stuffing something odious down our throats. It’s that swallow hard and vote Biden spirit. You love to see it.

And let’s be clear about the kind of people you get in bed with when you do the old-fashioned suck-up-to-donors fundraising approach. According to OpenSecrets, the number two donor to Biden’s 2020 bid has been Paul, Weiss et al. It’s a law firm that coincidentally just happened to win a big case this summer on behalf of their client Exxon Mobil, protecting the world’s largest oil company from any possible liability for alleged complicity in human rights violations in Indonesia. Congrats to Paul Weiss on their tremendous service to Exxon Mobil and congrats to the Biden campaign for having so many friends and allies there.

Yang and Sanders and Warren and Tulsi prove that there is another way. That the groveling before hedge fund managers and oil execs and corporate lawyers method of fundraising is completely optional, at least at the presidential level. Candidates do have a choice. It’s actually a revolutionary development. For the first time in modern history we have a chance to have a President whose only accountability is to the grassroots. It’s an incredibly democratizing moment that means yes: Even a random man has a shot at the Oval Office.