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**MAY 27, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

The Two Cults of Andrew Yang

According to some of the polls in the notoriously difficult to poll
Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Andrew Yang may be falling
behind Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams with just a few weeks
remaining before Election Day. Whether Yang makes the cut or not, we
have to recognize that by one metric-the ability to appeal to
improbably diverse groups of voters-he's either a political genius
or one of the most cynical politicos in the game today.

The smart money's on the latter.

In his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, Yang was able to
assemble a smallish group of devotees-chiefly young, male techies who
dubbed themselves the Yang Gang. The meme the campaign devised for them
was "Make America Think Harder," and its acronym-MATH-was
emblazoned on campaign caps and T-shirts as a rejoinder to and parody of
the Trumpies' MAGA slogan. This first Yang cult, if we may call it
that, was a subset of Silicon Valley wannabes, who, by current
Democratic standards, tilted disproportionately to private-sector
solutions for public problems and a mild brand of libertarianism.

In his current campaign for mayor, however, Yang's core constituency,
besides, understandably enough, Asian Americans, is the city's
ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects
,
who number perhaps half a million of New York's eight million
residents. The key issue for the Haredim, as they're called, is
keeping their own ultra-Orthodox schools-their yeshivas-free from
governmental regulation. An 1894 state law requires private and
religious schools to provide a secular education equivalent to that in
public schools, in addition to their instruction in religious doctrines
and such. As the ultra-Orthodox have grown in number and political
clout, however, the yeshivas have managed to skirt this requirement. A
2018 city survey of yeshivas found that 26 of the 28 in the study failed
to provide anything resembling a basic education. Graduates have
complained that they never heard about such well-known events as the
Civil War and American slavery until after they graduated and gingerly
set foot outside the Haredi self-created ghettos. Over multiple
millennia, anti-Semites have persecuted Jews, but not even they ever
managed to dumb them down. That achievement belongs to the Haredim.

We Can't Do This Without You


This lack of knowledge about anything except ultra-Orthodox ritual not
only reinforces the insularity of the various Haredi sects, but gives
them political clout, since the Haredi defer to their respective rabbis
(or "rebbes" in Haredi-speak) for instructions on how to vote. This
top-down uniformity at the voting booth has magnified the sects'
political influence in jurisdictions-chiefly, New York-where the
rebbes' endorsements really matter come election season. That's one
reason why the yeshivas have been able to duck the requirement to teach
history, English, science, and math.

This year's multitudinous crop of Democratic mayoral candidates has
largely come down on the side of requiring those yeshivas to provide
some verifiable facts and how-to skills to their students-with one
prominent exception. "We shouldn't interfere with their religious
and parental choice," Yang has said

on multiple occasions. The MATH man has been to the mountain (of votes,
he hopes) and now saith that Haredi kids won't have to learn science,
math, and history. And as the MATH man surely intended, his position has
won him virtually universal support among the rebbes, who produce
lockstep voting at a level that would have awed the Tammany bosses of
old.

The problem for Yang is that for years, the rebbes have instructed their
followers to register Republican, as the party that defends religious
orthodoxy. The number of Haredi who can actually vote in the Democratic
primary, accordingly, isn't that great.

Nonetheless, we need to salute Yang's achievement. Alongside his Asian
American supporters, he's managed to build two very distinct cults:
Young techie science-math semi-libertarians in 2019-2020, and
ultra-Orthodox anti-empiricism, anti-science semi-authoritarians in
2020-2021. Like I said, that qualifies Yang either as a political
genius or a pol who stands out for his cynicism even in this most
cynical of times.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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