Yang and the progressive question has bothered me since the beginning. Standard US progressives often dislike him and think he fails the purity test. His platform reads standard progressive to me (UBI, marijuana, climate, women, anti-gun, abortion, etc.), but so much of who he is, what he says, and how he'll implement his policies just doesn't fall along standard progressive lines.
-Progressives have a reputation for being angry, exclusionary, and singular-minded, e.g. Bernie and hating billionaires, though he's darn close to one. Andrew is kind-hearted, positive, all-embracing, and not angry, so he fails the progressive purity test in that way.
-Progressives have a reputation for being very stereotypically activist in their orientation and words, and Andrew doesn't have that. Just compare Bernie's tweets with Yang's, or AOC's, for that matter. Bernie and AOC have the anthemic talking points and rhetoric, but Yang not so much.
-Progressives have a reputation for being crude and lacking in a true moral compass and big-heartedness. And one of the most appealing and unique things about Yang is that he has a deep internal moral compass, and he's so genuine and authentic.
-Progressives are known to be badass. Andrew is badass in many ways, but not in the same way. He's amazingly alpha in his speeches and rallies, but he doesn't have a core of true, bitter, hateful badass. He's a good badass.
-Progressives, at least in the US, are very moralizing, virtue signalizing, and stuck in their narrow viewpoints, and they look down on anyone who dares to differ one bit. Andrew is not like that at all - he's very open-minded, a true free thinker, tolerant, and has a "live and let live" personality.
You can say Steyer is standard progressive, too - just look through his site. But no one thinks of him as that because he's a billionaire, etc.
And Yang is the most truly progressive with a small "P," the way people say they're libertarian with a small "L." He's the truest progressive in that he's about a forward movement, and his ideas are so bold and about true equality and justice for all people.