Letters to the Editor
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Obama - All Suit, No Substance
I agree with Cythera 45: Obama's campaign is marked by childishness and self-entitlement. His speeches are vacuous. There's no 'there' there. His wife is catty, saying they are owed the nomination for putting up with the indignities of the campaign: America had better act fast or her hubby may just go back to Chicago. Also, she doesn't know if they will support Clinton if she's the nominee. Being a cult figure or flavor-of-the-month may be fine for rock stars but a President is someone we have to deal with for four years, and these are not easy times thanks to the current idiot in the White House. Obama's supporters are not only cranky and belligerent, they are clueless. What will their man do when the right-wing hate machine attacks? Oh, he'll simply transcend partisanship! Sure: he can rise above the fray on the hot air he spews in his speeches.
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@jonathan
"And what Obama doesn't get is Latino Voters, when they vote, see themselves as Americans first and only.
Obama and his supporters don't see this."
Really? You're Americans first? Is that why your ENTIRE fucking post was about why you as Latino's won't vote for him?
- Love, an Indian American chick who evidently identifies as American first because she's voting for Obama
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@jonathanseer
Excellent points! I think you really hit the nail on the head concerning Obama's poor performance in the Latino community. I agree entirely that the ironic contrasts between his supporters and that community have not served him well at all.
I'd also add that one key tool Obama's relied upon, the internet, doesn't help as much in some Latino communities, and on a human level most immigrants of any race (esp those who vote) work to fit in socially, so they naturally gravitate to more traditional candidates (not in terms of race or gender but policy). After all, they're here entirely by choice! It's not surprising once they are eligible to vote that they might prefer candidates who remind them of the reasons they came in the first place. For many Latinos, that reason was Bill Clinton's policy (plus Clinton offered greater equity and justice to those who came in under Reagan). Finally many recent immigrants come from more social countries than our isolated society; People socialize on their blocks, and sit on porches, while we're watching tv and surfing the web.
Hillary's done a great job of reaching out, and speaking to them in terms they're comfortable with. She worked hard for their votes, and deservedly got them. Obama definitely needs to step up his game - not by pandering to their unique interests, but by explaining how those Latino issues fit in his broader vision. You're right: Latinos have a uniquely open perspective, and may be more objective than natives. Winning their support is a test of the message, not the candidate this year since the policy differences are slight. If Obama can't sell his message (which in many ways is more immigrant-friendly than Hillarys) to a significant segment of the Latino voters, he has little hope of enticing Republicans to cross over or stay home. No matter who wins the primary, we'll need those votes in November.
-d-
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The politics of establishment over the politics of race
Ms. Walsh has shown an annoying tendency to jump immediately to simplistic notions of race, class and/or gender in order to bring some sort of taxanomic order to what is actually a relatively complex array of factors used by voters to select the candidate of their choice.
Her discussion of "Asians" is a case in point. As with the rest of the punditocracy (interestingly, Walsh does not seem to believe she is a part of this group), Walsh engages in lazy generalizations which I believe end up obscuring more than they illuminate. As someone who has studied Asian diaspora cultures professionally for almost two decades, I’d like to make a number of points.
The first issue that needs to be remembered is that the people being interviewed are registered Democratic party voters. Many of the people who are active enough to vote in the primaries are people who are involved in Democratic Party politics or who have been mobilized by friends who are active in Democratic Party politics. As I have said before in this blog, Asians and Latinos inside the Democratic Party are much more likely to vote the establishment party line. And let us remember some of the people who are the Democratic Party establishment in California: Dianne Feinstein, who is often referred to as a quasi-Republican, Nancy Pelosi who has given the Republicans everything they want even though they are no longer the majority in the House, and the Orange County mafia who are similarly pro-business and pro government. Now granted, there's also Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, but the overwhelming majority of the California delegation are much less radical than the reputation of the state as "liberal" California would have us believe.
The party line in California is thus establishment and therefore overwhelmingly pro-Hillary. It is no accident that the states Obama took handily are those which have not been considered to be Democratic strongholds. The Democratic party power structures in these states are likely to be much more flexible and perhaps responsive to change since they have relatively little to lose compared to their dinosaur sister chapters in the Democratic heartland.
The second issue is that of generation and orientation. Those Asians who either are immigrants themselves or who identify politically and socially with their immigrant parents or grandparents are likely to be relatively conservative - not politically conservative but conservative in the sense that they want to be part of a large, powerful organization with which they have an established relationship and some history of mutual benefit. By contrast, third and fourth generation Asian immigrants, those young Asian Americans who see themselves as entitled to full citizenship in a cultural sense, and those with strong ties to other communities of color tend to be more excited by the idea of transformational politics and the kind of true polyculturalism that the Obama campaign represents.
Hillary Clinton's faction embodies the qualities sought by the immigrant-identified to a T.
The third issue I would like to point out (a trifle wearily), is that to make a big deal out of "Asians" political choices is to overstate the political importance of Asians as a group. Nowhere except in Hawai`i do Asian Americans constitute an electorally-decisive population in terms of numbers. There are select districts particularly in the LA area and the Bay Area where this is so, but in general terms Asian Americans are not in the same league as Latino voters in the southwest or African American voters in the southeast.
Ms. Walsh has confused the politics of establishment with the politics of race. In this she does nothing more than prove that she doesn't really understand the groups she blogs about with such apparent authority.