A new Columbus Dispatch poll suggests Barack Obama may be leading John McCain by as much as 36 points among Asian Americans in Ohio. Sixty-five percent of respondents in the poll’s “Asian/other” category back Obama, to just 29% for McCain. 

Obama also leads overwhelmingly among other voters of color, with a 44-point advantage among Latino voters and with 91% of the African American vote. McCain gets only a 4-point advantage among white voters. As a result, Obama holds a solid overall lead in Ohio, drawing 52% of the vote to McCain’s 46%.

More good news for Democrats: Among those who say they have already voted by absentee ballot, Obama holds an even bigger lead, 56% to to 42%. That means that those votes that are already in the bank will strongly favor Obama.

A lot of Asian Americans are traveling far from home to do everything they can in this crucial election. My friend Brian Kim, a Bay Area lawyer, traveled to Reno, Nevada last week to be a Democratic poll watcher at an early voting station. He wrote a great note about his experience, which I’m reproducing here with his permission.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to Washoe County, Nevada to do poll protection work for the Democratic Party. I decided to do it because I was driving myself crazy watching and thinking about the campaign 24-7 like everyone else I know. I really admired my friends (you know who you are) who have poured all of themselves into the Obama campaign, which because of work and family obligations I haven’t been able to do. I also wanted to do something for a targeted period of time where my training as a lawyer would have some value. Luckily, my boss had done poll protection in 2004 and he supported my decision to take days off for poll protection 100%. 

I had a great time despite some long hours and tedium, and the experience made me think about voting in a way that I never had previously when I just cast my own ballot. It also made me appreciate those of you who are campaigning your hearts out and getting out the vote for Obama that much more. 

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Barack Obama has opened up a huge 23-point lead over John McCain among Asian Americans in California, according to the latest Field Poll of the state. That margin is helping contribute to an overall 22-point lead for Obama among California voters, which if it holds would be the biggest presidential landslide in modern California history, outpacing even the margins racked up by Ronald Reagan. (SF Chronicle story here, PDF with full poll results here.)

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The well-known conservative historian Francis Fukuyama is voting for Barack Obama for President. In a new article in The American Conservative, Fukuyama writes: “I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush…Obama is much better positioned to reinvent the American model and will certainly present a very different and more positive face of America to the rest of the world.”

Fukuyama gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s for declaring the “end of history” with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent ascendancy of liberal democracy. But Fukuyama turned sharply against neoconservatism in recent years, harshly criticizing the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration. As we reported here, Fukuyama, a registered Republican, announced his support for Obama as early as May. Fukuyama is still one of the better-known Asian American public intellectuals (though I doubt he thinks of himself that way) and still a respected voice on the right, so having him as a cheerleader for Obama is pretty striking to see.

Update: The widely reported story of an assault on a McCain campaign worker by a black man shouting Obama slogans has now been exposed as a hoax, making this story about a real attack on an Obama volunteer even more relevant.

Update 2: More on McCain volunteer Ashley Todd’s beating hoax from HuffPo (here, here, and “an echo of the Charles Stuart case” here) and CNN.  FOX News predicts: “Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”

Update 3 (from Ramey): According to TPM, McCain’s Pennsylvania Communications Director apparently pushed “an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for ‘Barack.’”

As Eugenia posted earlier this week, a Barack Obama volunteer, 58-year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago, was physically assaulted on Saturday by a homeowner while canvassing in Caledonia, Wisconsin. Takehara told a local television station that the man “grabbed me by the back of the neck” and “was pounding on my head and screaming.” According to Takehara, the man yelled, among other things, that “we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN.”

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Jan C. Ting, an Asian American law professor at Temple University and a former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has authored an opinion piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer on why so many Republicans like him are coming out in support of Barack Obama.

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Since I was teaching tonight (yes, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is still the greatest book ever), I tuned in to the debate just in time to hear the first word out of John McCain’s mouth be “Ayers.” Yes, it was McCain Gone Wild, in last-chance mode, throwing every attack he could think of at Barack Obama.

But as with the two previous debates, it was McCain, not Obama, who was the story: Angry McCain, seething with barely controlled rage, condescending, grimacing, rolling his eyes, even getting in a good snort at the end. And in the face of it, Obama was cool, cool, cool, never taking the bait or letting McCain get under his skin, playing his own game. It’s exactly what he did brilliantly the past two debates. And it’s why the snap polls (results below the fold) show a third straight strong Obama win.

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The recently released National Asian American Survey–and its finding of strong support for Obama in the Asian American community–continues to get a lot of media attention. The Star-Ledger (NJ) reports today the survey’s finding that Asian Americans in New York and New Jersey back Obama over McCain by a 2-to-1 margin. In New York, 42% of Asian Americans support Obama, compared to 20% for McCain. In New Jersey, it’s Obama 37%, McCain 18%.

The story also mentions one of the most talked-about findings of the survey: that a large number of Asian Americans remain undecided (37% in New York and 45% in New Jersey). I have several theories about why this is, but I’ll just mention two factors, both of which have to do with the poll itself.

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Came across this piece on CNN.com about Korean Americans and the presidential election.  It’s more human interest than hard-hitting analysis–the reporting consists primarily of going into an Asian grocery store and a sushi place in Atlanta–but there’s a couple of amusing bits. There’s a nice interview with a talk-show host who says, “If Barack Obama can make it, maybe our children or our grandchildren can make it.” And there’s also a cute interview with a father and son; the son is for Obama, but the father says, “I am NOT a Republican. But I like Palin!”–with a twinkle in his eye.

An investigation by the Alaska legislature into the “Troopergate” scandal has concluded that Sarah Palin abused her power as governor in the pursuit of a personal vendetta, violating state ethics law by allowing her husband and her subordinates to press improperly for the firing of her former brother-in-law, a state trooper. 

More ominously, what the report shows, in almost absurd detail, is someone willing to exploit the power of her office to settle petty scores, placing personal vengeance above state business and dispatching state employees to do her dirty work. It’s a chilling preview of what we can expect from a woman who has already expressed the desire to wield even more power than Dick Cheney as vice president and who could ascend to the presidency at any moment should she and McCain be elected.  

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