From the New York Times, Unlikable Barrow, this is The Daily.

Today, even as well-known Democratic lawmakers failed to qualify for tonight's debate,

Andrew Yang did. Kevin Ruse on what has made Yang's campaign so compelling.

It's Thursday, September 12.

Kevin, tell me how you know Andrew Yang.

I met Andrew Yang a few years ago when he was running this organization called Venture for

America, which he had had a couple of careers. He was corporate lawyer, did some startups.

He actually sold one of his startups and made a decent chunk of money from that.

And then he was trying to do this thing where he would essentially turn recent college

graduates into entrepreneurs, set them up with some money and supporting them as they went off

and started companies. I sound like Teach for America for Business. Exactly. That's I think the

pitch that he made. And so I was covering technology at the time. We talked about Venture for

America. And I found it interesting, but not really all that newsworthy. I didn't end up writing

about it, but we kept in touch. And then he emailed me out of the blue in October of 2017.

And it was a very cryptic email. He just said, let's get together, I've got a story to tell you.

And I don't know. I like to go on goose chases. So I invited him out. We went to Dean and Deluca

write downstairs from the times building. And he told me that he was planning to run for president.

And at first, I was very confused. It was like president of the food co-op, like the the home

owners association, like what could you possibly mean by running for president? You know, he's

never held political office before. I didn't even know he was particularly interested in politics.

And he says, no, no, no, like I'm for real running for president in 2020 as a Democrat against Donald

Trump. This is not a joke or a stunt. And he's written this book talking about some of the big ideas

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