Stop Taking Asian-American Voters for Granted! This article deserves your attention. I never see

[emmaverybo]

DUers pay the time of day to any of the many ethic groups that comprise Asian-Americans, or to Pacific Islander-Americans either.

Not only do these voters DESERVE representation, but Democratic candidates need them.


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Democrats can't afford to ignore Asian American voters in 2020
The vocal enthusiasm for Trump within some immigrant communities, though not representative of the demographic, should serve as a warning to Democrats.

Given that Asian American voters could provide the margin of victory in battleground states such as Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, Democrats must make a concerted effort in 2020 to encourage them to vote and to convert the Trump supporters among them.

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, as good a time as any to reflect on the political power of a community that doesn't always get the same attention as other minority groups. Asian Americans are incredibly diverse, making generalizing on topics, like voter patterns, difficult. The fastest growing in the country, this population includes Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and other ethnicities. And each of these groups demonstrates a different level of support for President Donald Trump. For example, according to an October 2018 APIAVote poll, 64 percent of Vietnamese Americans approved of Trump, while only 14 percent of Japanese American voters did.

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Trump has also widened the chasm between the young and the old — those AAPIs who do support him tend to be older and male. Princeton Prof. Jeff Nunokawa told me that "many Asian American students suggested that their parents' support for Trump incited their first explicit opposition to them. Young Asian Americans were departing from their parents' views." His premonition is supported by the APIAVote poll, which shows that in 2018, 76 percent of 18- to 34-year-old Asian Americans disapproved of Trump, whereas only 46 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds did, mirroring the gap between young and old white voters.

The vocal enthusiasm for Trump within some immigrant communities, though not representative of the entire demographic, should serve as a warning to Democrats that these voters cannot be taken for granted. In an electoral landscape in which fewer than 80,000 voters can determine the presidency, every single vote matters.
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Full essay at

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/13/18308137/asian-american-voters-immigration-democrats-donald-trump

[still_one]

1. Good article. Thanks

[brush]

2. K&R. Good info.

[brer cat]

3. Important point, emmaverybo.

Thanks for the post.

[Hortensis]

4. I haven't been. But I also haven't expect Asian-Americans

to be paying attention to me either. They have no more special duty to schmooze and court me to vote morally and ethically than I do them. We're all adults, given 12 years of public education to prepare us for the duties of citizenship, and as adults we are supposed to stand on our own feet for what we believe in.

As for the reality that some will vote conservative, any assumption that it could be otherwise is based on ignorance. At least half of every demographic group is conservative by nature, literally genetically wired. Courtesy of external threats, AAs are unusual in uniting almost all their conservatives and liberals in one bloc in one party, but that won't always be the case. Someday, when the threats have mostly lost power.

And show me someone prone to resentment toward Democrats for any reason, and i'll show you someone who's almost certainly either conservative or far/fringe left, in both cases hardly reliable Democratic voters even if we promised them personally the world.

[Cha]

5. KR!

Mahalo, emmaverybo! We appreciate our diversity

[IronLionZion]

6. In 2018, however, outreach -- especially by Democrats -- improved.

In 2018, however, given how competitive many House races were, outreach — especially by Democrats — improved.

Imagine that. When campaigns reach out to people and listen to them, they tend to vote for the candidates.

Another nation-wide problem is that people need to stop thinking we are perpetual foreigners, H-1Bs, job stealing immigrants, etc. A hell of a lot more of us are US citizens than some folks may believe. And the number of voters is growing every day as more American-born children turn 18 after hearing deplorables tell us to leave this country.

In Kulkarni’s case, 28 percent of Asian voters participated in the Democratic primary in 2018, compared to just 6 percent in 2014.

Both Jordan and Hasanali offered similar advice for candidates seeking to mobilize Asian American voters in 2020: put in the time to connect with the community in the places and platforms that they frequented most.

[NYMinute]

7. K&R nt

[TomCADem]

8. Bernie Sanders Just Wants To Make Sure There Are Less Asian Americans

Remember when Donald Trump said he wants fewer immigrants from “shithole countries” and more from places like Norway?

Well, as Bernie Sanders stated during this segment:

“Nobody, I mean not many people believe in open borders. If you simply opened the borders, you’d have people from Vietnam and China and Mexico and Latin America coming in. And no one thinks that is a plausible approach. On the other hand, I think the strength of this nation is the diversity and the new ideas from immigrants from all walks of life have given this country. So you need a rational, non-racist immigration policy which welcomes people in from all over the world to improve our economy, but clearly you cannot have open borders.”

The irony is that Sanders’ stance against “a rational, non-racist immigration policy” gets a bit lost when he also thinks that it’s a bad idea to “have people from Vietnam and China and Mexico and Latin America coming in.” But, I am sure this racist message plays well in early primary states with certain less diverse demographics.

[loyalsister]

9. This is a valuable observation

One thing I like about Yang's candidacy is that it might be meaningful for Asian voters to seem themselves represented on the stage along with the other candidates challenging the white male template for the majority of presidents and candidates for centuries. I am not aware of evidence that there is widespread support for Yang among Asian voters, and I don't assume that he is carrying an ethnic platform.
I would like to learn more about what is important to them or if there are any collective issues or concerns that they see as important. As a white person, it's something I should have been learning about all along.