So I read the whole article, and you can count me among the strongest of #YangGangers in 2019/2020. I personally donated over $2,000 to his Prez campaign (a few hundred short of maxing I believe) and would promote him among friends and family (and some thru social media, but I don't spend a ton of time there).

I have to say this: I think you're probably right. I didn't want to believe in many of the things you've written for a long time, but it's hard to imagine otherwise at this point. Yang had excellent fundraising in 2019/2020, decent (though not amazing) debate performances, and was generally likeable. He could have made a much bigger impact and even won. There's a strong argument that a political outsider actually has many advantages in a political race (see Trump for example).

So when he did so poorly in Iowa and no better (worse?) in New Hampshire, I was crushed. And now with the benefit of distance from it all, I place the blame on Yang himself for not setting himself up to win. Note, I would say the same of Sanders btw; both in 2016 and 2020, Bernie should have won, but he blew it both times by making poor leadership decisions, not being aggressive enough in dealing with opponents, etc, etc.

I can't say I ever really liked Graumann (though I'd be lying if I said I disliked him, mostly didn't have much of an opinion), and from what you've written, it seems like a lot of the problems in Yang 2020 ultimately stemmed from him (though of course that's on Yang for keeping him around). I was never intimately familiar with all of his staff, but I honestly assumed that at some point, after he had raised millions of dollars, that he'd brought on some more politically-experienced individuals to balance out Graumann and other early employees. It's sad to hear that this was not the case.

It seems like the Progressive movement in general is plagued with poor leaders like Yang and tired ones like Bernie (and of course, some co-opted ones too that pretend to be progressive when they really aren't). I strongly believe that we need someone with very ambitious ideas to steer the ship away from the direction we've been going. I had hoped it would be Yang, and it seemed like it could have been, but here I am now just disappointed.

The one criticism I will offer for you is that I think you could have made all the points in this article in about half the words. Writing lengthy things is never easy (I have a lot of experience in this arena), but it's always important to be economical with our words and try not to repeat ourselves if we want others to read what we've written. I have patience, and so I read the whole thing, but many do not (and many in the #YangGang unfortunately do not either). Still a good article, but it would benefit greatly from significant reduction of words, particularly in the first quarter -- there's a lot of hinting at things multiple times that won't pay-off for several more sections.

Anyways, best of luck. From a former #YangGanger to another.