DNC Disses Andrew Yang: ‘I Kind of Expected to Speak’ at the Convention

The Democratic National Committee snubbed Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur who made a splash in the Democrat primary race with his happy-go-lucky style and major pitch for a universal basic income, excluding him from the list of speakers for next week’s party convention.

“I’ve got to be honest I kind of expected to speak,” Yang said in a social media post on Tuesday following reports of the convention’s speaker lineup.

“Maybe I endorsed against one too many incumbents,” he mused:

Yang, who suspended his campaign in February, made waves throughout his presidential bid, making the “Freedom Dividend” central to his campaign. Under his universal basic income (UBI) proposal, every U.S. citizen over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 in “guaranteed” income per month, “no questions asked.”

Yang, who said he would support the eventual nominee, formally endorsed Biden in March and encouraged the Democrat Party to come together.

“The math says Joe is our prohibitive nominee; we need to bring the party together,” Yang stated. “We need to start working on defeating Donald Trump in the fall.”

But, according to Yang, Biden has a lot of work to do to win over voters. It is not enough to run on returning to the years of Obama’s presidency.

“So even as Joe Biden saying, ‘Hey, we need to defeat Donald Trump,’ he also has to say, ‘Look, things have not been working for millions of Americans, and after we defeat Donald Trump,’ we need to get deep into these problems, get our hands dirty and solve them,” the CNN contributor said in March.

“This can’t be a, ‘Hey, I’m better than Trump’ race. It has to be, ‘Hey. I understand how Trump became our president,'” he continued.

In recent months, Yang has struck an optimistic tone toward Biden’s campaign, stating that Biden’s administration “is going to be one of the most important administrations in decades, in terms of a need for a new New Deal.” Yang believes Biden, who has been largely pitched as a moderate candidate despite surrounding himself with radical progressives and embracing the ideas of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), will be able to make many of the left’s radical policies “mainstream,” given his “long record as a moderate.”

Other former presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) appear on the speaker lineup for next week’s convention. Critics, however, are slamming the Democrats’ apparent decision to exclude Yang, who built a significant following, many of whom dubbed themselves the “Yang Gang,” from the lineup: