Andrew Yang fires dozens of staffers after bad showing in Iowa.

Andrew Yang. Politco/Getty. 

2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has fired dozens of staffers after a bad showing in the Iowa Caucus. Politico. Among those fired were senior staffers including the national political and policy directors along with the deputy national political director. It is unclear how many other staffers were let go but it was probably in the dozens. The Yang campaign downplayed the firings saying they had planned to do so after Iowa and that the fired senior staffers were not in fact senior. The fired staffers said that the campaign's hands off approach was not working, probably due to a lack of political experience.  

My Comment:

One of the things I have learned in my years watching politics is that when a campaign starts laying people off it means that the campaign is almost done. I have seen campaigns fire high ranking people and still continue but when it's the rank and file it means that the campaign is on the way out. This is a very bad sign for the Yang campaign. 

Yang did pretty terrible in Iowa. Though final results are still not in and who knows if they will be accurate or not, he did not do well. He came in sixth place and there isn't much chance of him gaining places if the results change. He's at 1% with zero delegates and is even behind Amy Klobucher, who got 12%. 

That's not the finish Yang was expecting. He ran a fairly viral campaign that got a lot of attention for his unique universal basic income idea. The offer of $1000 a month for every american was supposed to be the thing that set him against everyone else. It didn't work out that way. 

So why did Yang do so poorly in Iowa? I am not sure. I don't think that Iowans were that impressed by the $1000 a month deal. Though that would go a long way in Iowa where the cost of living is low, the kind of Democrats that would like that over more traditional forms of welfare are probably rare. 

I also thought that Andrew Yang was only popular among those that are "extremely online" and involved in the tech industry. Yang was popular on places like 4chan and Reddit (though I thought the 4chan support was astroturfed), but how many of those people lived in Iowa? 

I think New Hampshire will be the big test for Yang. If he fails there or even doesn't finish in the top three he might be done. It seems pretty clear that his campaign is out of money and he needs to show supporters and the bigger donors that he can still compete. If he finishes below 3rd place he's no longer a viable candidate. 

I do have to say that I kinda liked Yang. Though I think his UBI proposal would not work and couldn't be paid for, he gets credit for coming up with a new idea and acknowledging that our current welfare system is dumb. He also was more realistic and resistant to bad Democrat ideas like racism and gun control, but still not so much that I could even support him. Finally, his campaign was full of optimism and not simply Trump derangement syndrome.