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February 5th, 2008
The Fight Goes On
Posted by Keith KamisugiNBC News just called California for Clinton, mostly ending the night on a somber note. But with results from most states still incomplete, we may not have a better handle on the delegate count until tomorrow. Senator Obama won his fair share of states — states in fact that show that he will be the best nominee for the Democratic Party, especially against John McCain.
The more troubling numbers come from exit polling showing that that Obama lost the Asian vote with 25 percent to Clinton’s 73 percent. If these figures are accurate, this disparity demands some reflection and analysis because it certainly doesn’t reflect what those of us in the grassroots were seeing.
Bottomline is that we’ll continue to fight for Barack Obama in the states to come.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:19 am
It would be interesting to see how the Asian numbers broke down by age. Anecdotally, I met a number of college educated young Asian Americans and second and third generations who supported Obama but I met a very large number of older first generation of Asian American workers (e.g. healthcare workers, public employees, postal workers, etc)who supported Clinton. The first generation is the majority of our community. 66% of Asian American community in LA is immigrant(For ethnic specific, it is even higher–e.g.75%Korean). Based on my personal conversations, race is still an issue in our community.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Yes!! This is what Obama deserves for his racist remarks about Asian-Americans.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:44 am
John, I agree with you that race may have played a factor in how older generations of Asian Americans voted. We will definitely be looking into how we can get some data on Asian voting in California.
Dana, your accusation without any evidence to back up your statement makes you are part of a swiftboating movement that values hatred and division that Barack Obama is working so hard to overcome in this country. He is challenging all of us to be better than that.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I was disappointed by the Asian vote in the state where it matters the most. It will be interesting to analyze where the Hillary votes would go if Barack ultimately wins the nomination. I believe that there was also a lack of awareness amongst Asian Americans (particularly the older generation) of Obama.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:23 am
I too was shocked and disappointed by the low numbers for Asian-Americans in CA. My parents (1st generation Koreans) voted for Obama, citing his strength and “honest look,” which had whiffs of sexism as well. Sigh.
Okay. Time to do some more soul-searching and re-group. We only make up 3% of the US population, but this race is going to be really, really close. 3% will count.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Keith, as an Asian American from Cambridge, MA who is a passionate supporter for Obama, I want to do something substantive for Obama in the Asian vote.
I recently saw a Facebook group titled something like “asians who are ashamed their parents voted against barack”.
I like this idea.
Is there something we can do to reach the older generation in upcoming primary states and convince them to vote for Obama?
All I think they need is some education about who he is.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
One interesting thing I noticed is that when I went to barackobama.com to purchase a campaign button, I saw that there were no “Asian-Americans for Obama” buttons. There were “Latinos for Obama” buttons, “African-Americans for Obama”, “Hebrew for Obama”, etc. but none for us. Now, that to me is a glaring omission. I went to hilaryclinton.com and she clearly had an “Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders for Hilary” button. Now I know some of you are thinking that it’s not a big deal but that in it of itself to me shows his lack of concern for the Asian-American community. Especially given the huge disparity between Asian-American supporters of Hilary and supports of Obama, I think the least his campaign could do is at least pretend he cares. I understand we’re not as important to him as the Latino or African-American vote but if he had paid a bit more attention to us, he may have actually won several more states yesterday, most significantly California where he was obliterated in the Asian vote. I want to continue to support him but if he continues to ignore us, I may have to reconsider.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
80-20 just about accomplished its goal, and that’s pretty frightening. However, as much as I disagree with 80-20, some Asians seem to blame their parents for voting against Obama, and that’s wrong. He’s the candidate. This is a democracy. Such an overwhelming margin is a sign that Obama needs to do more to get the Asian vote. Don’t blame your parents for exercising their right to vote. Obama is as MUCH to blame for not convincing them to vote his way.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Let me put it another way, just imagine black women who voted for Hillary started a facebook sight called, “Black Women Ashamed that other Blacks are voting for Obama.” That would be ridiculous. And I think blaming Asian American voters for their overwhelming choice is equally ridiculous.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Criticism towards Obama about not doing enough to obtain the Asian American vote is misplaced. It was not a case of Hillary doing more to outreach Asian Americans. Hillary ran the standard political campaign that most experienced politicos run (e.g. targeting likely voters, obtaining key endorsements, canvassing, ads designed according to polling data,reliance on key political operatives and players, etc). By all traditional measures, Hillary should have been the clear frontrunner from the beginning. Hillary successfully secured key Asian American leaders with influence over the likely voters within the Asian American community (e.g. Judy Chu, John Chiang, etc). These are leaders who have a long track record (on the ground) with their specific ethnic communities. Obama would have never gotten this far following the standard electoral campaign model. He used a grassroots model that relied on volunteers and staff from that local area. He targeted the unlikely voters and got them involved. I believe that Obama’s campaign failed to recruit the support of needed grassroots organizers in specific Asian immigrant communities to make a difference. An AA/PI campaign targeting Asian immigrants would have controlled for issues of race by further educating them about the Obama campaign. Unfortunately, a Kelly Hu has drawing power for youth but not a first generation immigrant Korean shopowner trying to run their store. The kind of one-on-one work done in South Carolina needed to be done in the Asian American / Pacific Islander communities here. That didn’t happen so the complicated issues of race, the immigrant community’s unfamiliarity with Obama and the traditional and seasoned bulwark of Asian American elected leaders and political operatives that supported Hillary led to a large Asian American vote for Hillary. This can only have been averted if there were enough Asian Americans on the grassroots level systematically working the Asian immigrant population. Hillary did not have to spend alot of money getting the Asian American vote when she has folks volunteering to do it for her (their participation on the more traditional and tested top-down Clinton campaign is not as intensive as the bottom-up driven campaign of Obama. his approach requires systematic one-on-one work like what was done in Iowa and S.Carolina). Who were the Asian American leaders doing the grassroots one-on-one work with first generation Asian immigrants in L.A?
It was this campaign approach that brought him this far against all odds but it is also an approach that falls apart if different people from specific groups aren’t involved. see the following article to see how Obama’s campaign structure differs from Hillary.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_year_of_the_organizer
February 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for the info, John. You pointed out things I didn’t know about. However, while structural differences may account for some of the imbalance, I don’t think it accounts for a 50 to 60% imbalance. Those exit polls (don’t know how accurate they are) seem to indicate he even lost the young, college-aged Asian American vote, which he is winning convincingly in other races. There’s more than structure involved. I believe race (unfortunately) is a factor. I also believe Obama hasn’t addressed Asian Americans enough. Especially as the new face, the onus was on him to reach out to Asian Americans personally, like he did to Latinos.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Asian American voters have supported Black candidates in the past, so the idea that Asians are too racist to support Obama is completely unfounded. In a totally unrelated exit poll of the Villagairosa vs. Hahn mayoral election in LA, Asians indicated by an overwhelming margin that experience is very important to them and unity very unimportant to them. Sounds familiar? May ideology and not race play a more significant role in why Asians voted the way they did? You can read more about the research I did here: http://redpillpolitics.com/2008/03/04/race-and-politics-the-overused-divide/