I think you may be underestimating how hard it is to go from complete political obscurity to “3rd tier” candidate in a year, running against former VPs, senators, and movement history-makers. It took Bernie decades to get taken seriously on stuff like Medicare for All.

Probably 95% Americans had never heard of UBI about two years ago. Now it’s more like 50/50, with a significant percentage supporting it. And all this despite horrendous media coverage of both Yang and UBI as an idea.

UBI is inevitable, and the Yang campaign deserves a hell of a lot of credit for dramatically accelerating how soon that’ll happen.

At the same time, his campaign owes a great percentage of its own rapid growth to just how damn powerful the idea of UBI is.

Maybe try setting aside the cynicism for a minute, and dropping your mental walls enough to give UBI a real look. You might be surprised.