What criteria makes Andrew Yang a serious candidate compared to Marianne Williamson?

I’ve seen the two talk in long form on YouTube and Yang definitely had a more comprehensive platform and policies. What Marianne Williamson was onto was not trivial either, I think there is a lot of of truth to what she’s said about healthcare “sickcare”, Loss of meaning, and unity. But Yang had a lot of very well though out positions that never really came out in 30 second soundbites.

Usually I'd see his supporters point out polling averages and/or fundraising which seems reasonable. He'd often be omitted from groups that included people with much worse metrics on both.

I don't think mass media is justified to some degree basing their coverage off polling until the primaries start.

There's always a bunch of candidates who seem credible but can't get enough support, and others who do.

Compare Yang, Williamson, Klobuchar and Buttigieg and a bunch of other candidates. Buttigieg started polling well, which justified coverage. Klobuchar didn't get any coverage until her outstanding debate performance and then her polls picked up.

The others just never polled high enough for anyone to consider them credibly able to be nominated.

Buttigieg's positive coverage started when he was polling below 2% (even when he was polling below 1%). A lot of it had to do with having the right establishment connections[1]. His success in the polls seems to be the result of the media deciding to give him a lot of positive coverage, not vice versa. The same seems to be true of other candidates this cycle (like Klobuchar and Warren).

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/29/lis-smith...

> Klobuchar didn't get any coverage until her outstanding debate performance and then her polls picked up.

Klobuchar was getting lots of coverage, including major media endorsements (like the NY Times, which did a weird split endorsement of her and Warren), before the debate performance, and even after she's still barely registering in the polls nationally, polling at around 5% on average

I think after the primaries start performance in the primaries (especially unexpected performance) is a better indicator of expected media coverage.

PBS also seemed to like klobuchar long before anyone else knew the name.

I mean, these tweets are just nuts: https://theweek.com/articles/850004/marianne-williamsons-25-...

President Trump's been tweeting crazy conspiracy nut things for years, like having 'extremely credible sources' saying President Obama is from Africa. Clearly tweeting crazy things doesn't disqualify one from becoming President.

It does disqualify one from becoming a Democratic President, though.

But it should. Trump got through a filtering processes that should have prevented him from becoming president. This is not evidence that we should not filter crazy people out of the electoral process. If anything it’s evidence that the filter needs some work.

I think gender is the obvious difference.

Voter support, as measured by contributions and surveys.

And why do voters feel as they do? Because his weirdness is possibly the result of underlying genius, while for her weirdness it’s more likely to be mental illness.

Same was said for trump and yet he managed to cancel tpp, renegotiate NAFTA, and a new trade deal with Chinese. Three of Sanders's biggest talking points.

He also made enough political changes so that Sanders went from "open borders are a Koch brothers idea , bad for the nation", to "free healthcare for illegals"