Progressives, get over
it. Obama still represents a “new type
of politics.”

Longtime Chinese American activist
Grace Lee Boggs once described them as the “walking wounded”–the cynical and
skeptical survivors of the political battles of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. They were the ones who initially looked
warily on Obama’s message of hope and change and could not yet call the
momentum amongst youth a movement. Some disregarded
Obama’s inspiring words as empty political posturing and attributed the youth
surge to naïveté. Others took the
position of “critical support.”

Since the perceived
rightward shift of Obama on some select issues, some ardent Obama supporters
have joined this jaded troop. Kos of
Daily Kos stated he would still vote for Obama but would withhold
his contributions because of the candidate’s support of the FISA compromise. Arianna Huffington issued a dismissive
critique of Obama’s “move to the middle” strategy. Jenn of Reappropriate, while acknowledging
the practical considerations and remaining supportive of Obama, felt disillusioned and disappointed
when he waived public campaign financing. For most of them, Obama violated the integrity of his campaign and stepped
into the “politics as usual.” However, policy
positions were never the basis for Obama’s “new type of politics.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Orange County is the birthplace of a number of conservative initiatives that have swept the nation. So one can imagine the sudden hush in the room when Scott Flanders, CEO of the company owning the Orange County Register, announced at a corporate staff luncheon his support of Obama for president. Flanders joins a nascent cadre of premier conservative theorists disaffected with the Bush administration. The advance of conservatives favoring Obama, aka the “Obamacons,” suggests a major shift in the national narrative and consciousness.  Bush’s War in Iraq has led to a tactical realignment of leading conservative thinkers, progressive activists, young people, African Americans and new voters of all races. With Jerry Falwell’s former chief of staff Mark DeMoss predicting 40% of evangelicals may possibly line-up behind Obama, the Age of Reaganism may face its final curtain call this coming November. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Obama made history when he became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the president of the United States. The first African American becoming the nominee of a major party for a presidential race has important consequences for Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Obama’s victory broke an important racial barrier for all of us and struck major fissures in the outdated definitions of “American.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Shortly after Clinton’s victory in the Puerto Rico Democratic primary, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told a group of reporters that Obama has a Latina/o “problem” and has difficulty garnering this group’s support.  In light of Obama’s inevitable nomination, McAuliffe’s crude analysis feels more like a dying animal’s last desperate swipe than any thoughtful assessment.  Worse yet, it grossly underestimates people’s capacity to be more than themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

“My supporters are racist,” explained Hillary Clinton on why she was the best candidate to be the Democratic nominee.  This biting impersonation by Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live struck me more sad than funny.  Like any successful satire, it directly grabs and shoves it in your face the popular notion of the white working class as generally racist.  According to legend, President Lyndon B. Johnson, shortly after signing the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, had commented, “We have the lost the South for a generation.”   Since Johnson, significant white working class majorities have eluded every Democratic presidential candidate.   However, white working families are not unthinking automons driven by their fear of the “black man.”  Like Obama surmised, white working people’s experience “is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After North Carolina and Indiana’s primaries, predictability settles in with the rest of the race.  Clinton will win West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico but not with the large margins she needs. Obama will win Oregon, South Dakota, and Montana.  The proportional system of the primaries negates any mathematical equation that erases Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.  Obama’s North Carolina victory secures his edge in the popular vote.  Clinton and undeclared superdelegates continue to move toward Obama while not a single Obama superdelegate has defected to Clinton (Former Clinton supporter George McGovern’s switch to Obama and call for Hillary to drop out of the race is one of the latest).  The numbers are clearly on Obama’s side and his declared next steps highlights the type of leadership we should expect in the general election and the White House.   It also calls the question on Hillary Clinton and us.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania and now all the pundits ponder the meaning of 10 points–the new numerology for the new millennium.  Some try to read the minds of the "bitter" white working class.  Some conclude that there is a winning magic in the dark arts of negative campaigning.  Some dismiss Clinton’s victory as an illusion and others praise
her miraculous comeback onto the stage. Frankly, after spending last week away
from the elections and marching 28 miles with thousands of different workers in  Los Angeles, I
find this whole show to be really ridiculous. It is too easy to be caught up in this superbowl of elections and its
recent devolution to “kitchen-throwing” game play and forget what this race is
really about. For some of us, this
election is not about whose more electable but something deeper.

Read the rest of this entry »

We have become vultures
over the carcass of intelligent discourse. Once again, Hillary has swept down on the words of Obama, this time
labeling him an “elitist” while regaling us with tales of her youth shooting a
gun with her father. The traditional
rules of campaign engagement forces us to substitute substantive discussion
with fingerpointing and selective listening. Oddly enough, Obama was repeating
an analysis that has circulated throughout the Democratic Party including by
the Clintons themselves for the last few years. (From the white labor movement’s advocacy of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to the 1990’s beating of Chinese American Vincent Chin by two white autoworkers who blamed the loss of their jobs on Japan, history has shown us that Asian Americans/ Pacific Islanders cannot dismiss Obama’s comments as "elitist" but something that resonates close to our experiences and warrants real discussion).

Read the rest of this entry »

Why I Support Obama as a Sikh American
by Valarie Kaur

As a Sikh American whose family settled in America 100 years ago,
this election is different than any other my family has seen. This is
the first election where I believe the future of my community and
country rests on our support of a single presidential candidate: Barack
Obama.

Sikhs will have a choice on February 5th: we can stick to
politics-as-usual, or we can join a movement in this country. A
movement where people divided by race, religion, and politics are
finding the courage to recognize themselves in one another and come
together in a common cause. A movement that would end the old politics,
in which Sikhs are forever minorities asking to be accommodated, and
usher in a new politics of unity that ties Sikhs to all Americans in
the same struggle for freedom.

Obama alone represents this movement.  Its momentum is real.  We are already part of it.  I have witnessed it.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 4 marked the anniversary of the death
of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Both
Hillary and McCain traveled to Memphis ,
the site of Dr. King’s final moment, to honor his memory.  McCain
used the moment to apologize for voting against the creation of a Dr. King
federal holiday. Hillary related a
personal story of how Dr. King affected her growing up. However, to the disappointment of some, Obama
chose to pay tribute in Indianapolis.
Some critics immediately concluded Obama is ignoring the African American
community as a given vote in his pursuit of the presidency. Of course, a similar analysis can be made of
McCain and Hillary’s visit to Memphis
as an effort to court the votes of this same group. Intentions can be widely debated but Obama’s
decision to make his speech in Indianapolis highlights an aspect  of Dr. King’s message that holds more relevance for Asian American / Pacific Islanders.

Read the rest of this entry »